Tales of Downfall and Rebirth (30 page)

Also this was a bigger, meaning more prosperous, settlement than the one he'd managed to turn into a lynch mob raving to see the color of his insides. The road here was broad and in good repair, as it wound its way among low, grassy hills and the houses scattered over them. Some of which were pre-Change cement or cinderblock. Like the one he'd braced the laborer by, obviously an old Pemex gas station, though what scavenging might have left of the pumps and any sort of signage, a couple of decades of weather eradicated. Now only memory remained to suggest what the structure with the formerly wide windows largely filled in by adobe blocks, and the mother outside teaching her preteen daughter to grind corn on a metate, had once been.

“Why do you want to know?” the mason asked suspiciously.

Judging from the white dust on the front of his leather apron, and that flew from his hands when he dusted them together, he worked in limestone.

“I'm a bounty hunter,” Zamora said in his best guttural growl. Which given his breadth of chest and normal voice, was mighty good indeed. “He's a child stealer. Got a good price on his head.”

He had wised up some since his last debacle. Started thinking with the head that held up his hat, instead of the other one. Though that one hadn't been getting much of a workout lately, either, if you lay aside the incident with the rattlesnake-priestess in the cantina. And Zamora was inclined to let Señor Feliz off the hook for that one, since magic had no-shit been involved.

“Yeah, we know him. Took away two of Widow Susana's
niñas
, and Old Lady Martinez's grandson Rico, whom she took care of after Federales killed his parents. Not a one of 'em over nine years old.”

Zamora's gut clenched as if in preparation to take a blow.
What was Brodie doing mixed up in scaly shit like this?
he wondered for closer to the thousandth time than the hundredth. Why would he even be dealing with bloodthirsty freaks like Huitzilopochtli cultists and a Coatlicue priestess at all, much less for something like stealing kids? He wouldn't even run a scam on somebody if it might make a child go hungry . . .

The key to finding the truth, as Tezcatlipoca said, was to track down the kids Brodie had, apparently, helped snatch. If any of them were even still alive . . .

“How do you know it was him?” he asked.

It may not have been strictly in character for a bounty hunter—who, logically, wouldn't care about such niceties, so long as he got paid for the head. But he really wanted to know.

Maybe he was hoping it would all turn out to be a mistake after all.

“He told us he was looking for a few orphan kids to take to an
instituto
where they'd be raised up right,” the workman said. “They'd get educated, even fed better. Even though Susana's kids aren't really orphans, she don't have much family left to help her raise four of 'em, after Humberto got eaten by wild hogs and all. They liked the gringo's line about how much better life would be at this fancy school. Got pretty excited. They were her youngest, Ramona and Isabel.”

“Did he say what kind of
escuela
this was?”

“Naw. Just that it was good. And run by priests.”

Zamora grunted.

I bet it was,
he thought.
Just maybe not the sort the people here thought.
Catholicism had never been far from the main vein of Mexican life. But it had become a more powerful influence than ever, after the Change.

“They vanished in the night. The gringo paid good steel washers for a bed at the inn, but come the morning, he and the kids were gone.”

“Did you go after them?”

The mason shook his head. “Not far,” he said. “They got a good head start. And we're a poor village. We all got to work sunup to sundown to pay our taxes, or Barón Alonzo sends men with crossbows and armor to make an example or two. To encourage the survivors to work harder.”

*   *   *

“Looks like the gringo everybody's talking about,” the trader said, nodding. “Weedy little bug-eyed motherfucker. Bad teeth.”

The lead caravanner was a woman whose face had been sunburned into a mass of leathery wrinkles despite the straw hat she wore—Panama style, rather than the currently more-common Asian variety—over a gaudy red-orange-blue floral bandanna wrapped around her head. She had a stub of Cubano cigar sticking out a corner of her mouth as she looked up at Zamora.

“Everybody says he's one bad dude,” she said, and laughed. “Wouldn't think it to look at him. Like a puff of wind would blow him away.”

“Stealing children,” a black drover said. “Don't need to be strong for that.”

The half-dozen traders led three times that many burros, each with big, sloshing clay jugs hung on framework carriers strapped to their backs. The jugs, they told him, contained tequila from the blue earth country. Zamora wanted to ask about how they did business: did they mean to trade for the nails and needles
norteños
stamped and filed out of scrap metal? Fine swords from New Wazoo? Did they follow the common practice of buying carriage-beasts at the same place where they bought their goods, and then selling off the creatures as their loads were delivered and became surplus?

Because that was what he did, ask questions. About anything and everything.

But today he was Seeking other information.

“Any idea where he's taking them?” he asked.

The traders seemed glad enough to break and chat, as folk usually did hereabouts. Even in the old days Mexico had moved to its own pace. Zamora had been raised enough of a
norteamericano
still to feel pangs of impatience with their deeply ingrained cultural lack of urgency, sometimes.

The exception was a silent indio—Zamora sized him up for a Rarámuri, or Tarahumara—who never stopped scanning the surrounding hills, and especially their back trail.

Traders carried lever-action repeating crossbows, with relatively light springs, and wore crossed bandoleers of quarrels.

The Rarámuri, though, carried a full-on sniper model, with a heavy bow cut from car springs and a pre-Change four-power scope. All sported a variety of cutlery, most prominently machetes and steel-headed hatchets.

They were bandit-wary he reckoned, naturally enough. But they were also probably watchful for predatory local barons, whether or not nominally associated with the Federated Kingdom. The fact was, Cuauhtémoc II couldn't even claim to control more than a day's travel from his own capital. But that didn't stop him and his vassals from sending patrols far and wide to loot in the name of tariff and taxation.

Zamora expected scorn in reply to his question, though he had to ask. The easy answer was, If anybody knew, they'd go get their kids back. And burro-drivers had a reputation for especially caustic speech and manners at the best of times.

But to his surprise the woman nodded.

“People say they go off toward there,” she said, taking the stogie from her mouth to hold it between the first two fingers of the hand she pointed southwest with. He saw a plume of gray smoke rising into the cloudless afternoon sky.

“Why don't people go after them?” he asked in surprise.

“Locals are afraid to go there,” said another trader, with long, drooping moustaches, a none-too-sanitary looking eye patch, and a nasal Veracruzano accent.

“Because they think the smoking mountain is an evil spirit?” Zamora asked.

The traders all laughed. Even the indio grunted amusement.

“No,
¡norteño estúpido!
” the lead trader said. “That's just a volcano, like a hundred others in Mexico. They fear the evil spirit who lives there. They say it kills men and eats children.”

Zamora nodded. Inside him exultation warred with a deep sense of,
Oh, fuck me
.

“Thanks,” he said.

“You're not going there,” the black guy said.

Zamora shrugged. “Dude's got a good price on his head.”

The traders looked impressed at his balls. Or something.

“Lucky for you,” the chief trader said, “you're too ugly even for a
demonio
to eat.”

Zamora rubbed his chin. “We'll see about that,” he said.

*   *   *

“Yeah,” Zamora grunted softly. “Fuck me was right.”

The good news was he'd found the place where Brodie—or, more likely, Brodie's customers—had brought the stolen children.

The bad news was—well, that.

“So this thing does work both ways,” he said to the face that resolved out of the mist on the obsidian mirror.

“It wouldn't be much use to me, otherwise,” Tezcatlipoca said. “Though like any god, I reserve the right to ignore prayers and other calls upon my divine attention if I damned well feel like it.”

“But you picked up this time.”

“Of course. What have you got for me, Buscador?”

“Found the camp. It's near an active volcano—vent, anyway. Sends up clouds of ash and makes a nasty sulfur stink. Haven't seen sign it's been doing much else lately, but all the rocks are old lava and igneous shit.”

“And the camp?”

He lifted his head over the jagged boulder he'd found shelter behind, on a handy lava-flow ridge, and peered through his binoculars. At least the laws of optics hadn't gone
chingado
with everything else.

“They got the kids, two dozen or so, in a wooden pen built against a big old rock. It just has a crappy ramada, with latillas and brush for shade, a few water jugs, and that's pretty much it.”

“And the cultists?”

“That's the problem, now. They got a bunch of adobe-hut barracks. Some of 'em look to've been here a while; dunno if they took them over, or have just been here that long themselves. I see maybe a dozen hefty dudes with those obsidian-edged sword-club things, and various Eagle Society regalia.”

Whether formally trained or just combat-seasoned, the way the Eagle Knights carried themselves told Zamora they were pretty serious badasses. As a largely self-taught pretty serious badass himself, Zamora knew the signs.

“Macuahuitl,” Tezcatlipoca said.

“Gesundheit.”

“The swords. That's what they're called.”

“I knew that.”

“Go on.”

“They also got some women I make for Rattlesnake Mother priestesses. At least six or seven. They all have the ugly stone medallions. Plus there's a shitload of random cultist dudes. I've seen at least thirty-forty, and got no clue how many others may be inside. They got housing for twice that many, if everybody's real friendly-like.”

The cultists were not by and large a prepossessing bunch. To Zamora's surprise most of them looked to be middle-aged—men who could remember what the world had been like before the Change. Some of them looked to be almost as old as he was, if not near as old as he felt right now.

But to be doing something as bad as mass child sacrifice, they had to be stone fanatics. That and sheer numbers made them dangerous. Plus the Knights probably acted as cadre, training and leading them.

“Excellent,” Tezcatlipoca said. “You've found what we both were seeking. Now you can disrupt the rites, and avenge your friend.”

“Not so fast,” Zamora said. “There's way too many of them for me to take on by myself.”

“Ah, but you have no choice.”

“Sure I do. And I choose ‘hasta la vista, baby.'”

“You misunderstand. The sacrifice is due to happen tonight. As soon as the sun dies—or goes down, as you moderns would put it—the children's lives will be offered to Coatlicue.”

“And I feel terrible about that. But I told you: I got no chance. They're way too active, and there's way too little cover, for me to sneak in. And much as I hate the idea of them murdering those poor kids, it's not gonna help them one little bit if I die trying to rescue them. Which is what'll happen.”

“And what of Brodie?”

“
Órale.
I reckon revenge isn't just a dish best served cold, but in individual helpings. Over time. And unless I get to come back as history's most kick-ass ghost, I won't be doing any avenging after I'm fucking dead. So, sorry. But the deal's off. Not that we even had a deal.”

“As I say, you misunderstand me. The Rattlesnake Mother wants—needs—this sacrifice to let her enter more fully into this world. And act in it.”

“Why do I have a bad feeling about that?”

“Because sacrificing the stolen children will be like opening a door. Once Coatlicue comes through, she's going to need a whole lot more sacrifices to keep her here. And she's pissed. She was never that sweetly reasonable to begin with, I assure you.”

“And that would be a bad thing?”

“The worst,” Tezcatlipoca said. “That's when the real
matanza
begins. You dig?”

Zamora sighed. “I dig.”

“But I will sweeten the pot for you, Seeker. If—when—you stop the ceremony from happening—”

“And free the kids.”

“—that, too. Then you will learn why and how your friend was really tied up with this scheme.”

“If I survive.”

“That, too.”

“Bastard.”

“Tezcatlipoca.” The god chuckled. “You know what you must do, my friend. Unless you want the world—and your own life—to end in blood and fire and screaming and all that Lovecraft jazz. So I'll leave you to it.”

“Yeah,” Zamora said glumly.

He looked up at the sky. The sun was close to the mountains, which were themselves much closer than they had been when he started this latest crazy quest of his.

“My dad's people always told me my curiosity would be the death of me,” he said. “Well, I got a couple hours to kill . . .”

*   *   *

The altar stone was uncomfortably hot on Zamora's naked back and ass. But surprisingly smooth. The woven-yucca ropes were uncomfortably tight on his wrists and ankles, though.