Victory! Victory!” and the Ocelot crowd shouting, “Tuus! Tuus! Tuus!” “Deception, deception, deception.” Nearer, I heard Hun Xoc’s voice.
“Chokow pol!” It meant “crazy” or “Crazy Man,” another common and somewhat more admiring pun on my name. But he used it only as a warning. I turned. All I could see was this big black thing but I ducked in time for it not to tear my head off.
4 Blue Howler had scooped up the dead ball and yoked it at my head.
What’s going on? I thought kind of dully. I was still endorphined out. Ball was supposed to be an elegant game-at its best combining the artistry of rhythmic gymnastics with the excitement and finesse of men’s lacrosse- and now it’s turning into Australian football. Howler ran at me, following the ball. I turned like I was going to run away and then dug my right foot into the bank and pushed off the angle between the floor and the sloping wall, stopping myself. Howler skidded into me from behind. I hunched forward and pushed my rear end back and felt the left prong of my horseshoe-shaped yoke connect with bone. I rolled forward and was on my feet again. Howler was sliding in a clockwise arc down the bank, leaving a wide black streak. The crowd loved it. I crouched into a “turtle,” expecting a tackle from Emerald Immanent, but it didn’t come. I looked up. Red Beak had gotten hold of him. Not for long, though, it looked like. Behind them I noticed Emerald Snapper and the two Emerald bench players running at us. Snapper was huge and big-boned and I thought for a beat that I’d had it, but he got off balance and as he fell toward me I got his head right on the sweet spot of my yoke. There was no crack, it was more like just a quiet glutch. Whatever, I thought, yeah, forget the damn Marquess of Queersbury rules, let’s take the buttons off the foils. As Snapper fell back he got a hand into my yoke and pulled me down onto the slaughterhouse floor. I managed to roll away before he rolled onto me and flattened me. Emerald Immanent was coming back around on my right. The umpires’ drivers and both sides’ invisibles were already out on the court, trying to shield the players they were assigned to.
“Lothic ekel ytzam,” Howler yelled from the other side of the court. Basically it meant “You’re taco meat,” except ytzam was this really cheap sort of pemmican that the pastless clans ate and sold. It was known for having all sorts of squirrels and bats and bugs and mud and shit in it.
“Chikin ukumil jotzpaljal,” I said, scooping the ball out of the air with my hand shield. “Your shrunken dick is showing.” That particular word for shrunken meant like with a shrunken head. I launched the ball off my yoke in an arc over his head. It looked like a good lob, but I slipped on blood and fell backward. Up in the stands what had been everyone arguing at once was devolving into everyone shouting at once. Out at either open end of the court, where some of the Ocelot and Harpy partisans overlapped, I could hear a few little slap-fights starting, the kind that turn into big ones. Some of the Harpies were cheering my name, that I was Chacal, I guess figuring I was back from the Underworld.
Where’s the ball gotten to? I wondered. I rolled over on my stomach-with all the padding we were wearing, falling over was one thing that didn’t usually result in an injury-and for a beat I could see Lady Koh’s eyes watching me, unblinking and seemingly calm, penetrating through the swirls of motion and feather confetti. I thought about signing up to her but it was too far, I’d have to gesture too loud. Ahead and behind I could hear younger bloods were pouring through both end zones into the playing trench.
I noticed Hun Xoc’s hand under my arm. He pulled me up. Both sides’ bloods were overpowering the drivers, who only had these short ceremonial maces anyway, more just regalia than practical weapons.
Hun Xoc tensed as Howler came at us again. Howler hit him. Hun Xoc skidded back into me on the bloody floor. I toppled over and there was what seemed like two minutes where Howler was kneeling, looking down at us and babbling through a cluster of little bits of teeth and glogs of foamy mucus, something to the effect of how he was going to fuck us with a barrel cactus, one after the other. I just gritted my teeth and grunted back. Finally there was a crack as Hun Xoc got to an almost-standing position and brought one of his palm guards down on Howler’s head. Howler stopped sputtering. I pulled myself upright, clawing onto one of our invisibles, and got my hand on Hun Xoc’s shoulder. There was all sorts of jewelry and expensive clothing falling down from the stands and you couldn’t see much, but the main problem was that we were already getting moshed between all these fans, which was usual enough for us except some of them were armed with obsidian-flake saws, and like I said, compared to that shit syringe needles and razor blades seem blunt by comparison. I climbed half-up someone and looked around for Koh. I couldn’t see her but a squad of six of Koh’s Rattler bloods, the ones she’d promised me, were sliding to us down the north bank. The rest of both sides of the crowd took that as a cue to start oozing down the banks into the trench. That’s it, no more play, I thought. Les jeux sont totalement faits, copains. Fear, fear, foes, fuck Four of Koh’s Rattler guards got through and pushed through the knots of churning flesh on the court and kind of enclosed Hun Xoc and me, like an amoeba swallowing a pair of paramecia. Finally they got us up on their shoulders. I looked up and finally picked out Lady Koh. Like us, she was totally cut off, completely separated from the main body of the Harpies. She was gesturing at me. Go for the well. I climbed up on one of the guard’s shoulders and looked west over all the headdresses. The V of the court’s canyons looked invitingly open, with the emerald? of the Ocelots’ mul sticking up inside it. I can do this, I thought. Anyway it’s not really like being brave, it’s just like you’re 99.44 percent definitely fucked anyway so why not spend your last minutes of freedom doing something a little wacky? Anyway, it’s not that far. We need only about two minutes of misdirection.
I looked back up at Koh. She kept signing. Go for the well. Go for the well. Well, well, well. She added an “urgent please.” Ko’ox tuun! Go. Go. Go. Gogogogo GOGOGOGO!!!!!!!
(38)
Koh’s entourage closed in around her like bees in a ball around their queen. Above us and to the right some of the Death House guards were trying to get through the crowd and jump down at us, but they were all tangled up in the spectators’ capes and scarves and jewelry, like the victims in that bombing at Harrods. The hipball music was still going on, imitating the sounds of fighting. Maybe the musicians just kept playing as a way of staying musicians and not becoming combatants.
They carried us west, over the Ocelots’ end-zone line. Keep your head up, I thought. Win through intimidation. The Ocelot bloods and partisans parted in front of us, not like the Red Sea, though, more like they just wanted to get a look at us before they decided whether to tear us apart. We got past the players’ pen, out into the small zocalo between the Ocelots’ end zone and the beginning of the three tiers of steps that led up to the razor stairs of their mul, rising up only about four rope-lengths away. The long emerald-green-stuccoed stone wall of the Ocelots’ clan house was on our left side, and beyond and behind that there were two actual semiresidential sections of wood and plaster climbing up the rising ground. The nearer one was for women and the higher, the holier one was for men. Beyond that I could see the top of a gaudy ceremonial wall worked with deep frets and triangular crenellations and behind that a long red-and-green smudge, the manicured and pollarded treetops of the Ocelots’ poison garden, surrounded by a thorn wall. It wasn’t really that far.
I told them to put us down. They did. I yanked off my helmet and arm protectors. At the Ocelots’ equipment house some big mean-looking guy stepped out in front of us like, hey, what’s going on? I threw my damn stuffed rodent in his face and he ducked in this comical way. It was this magical talisman flying at him with its sharp little claws. I fished a little shell knife out of my crotch pouch, cut the cords off my outer swag of quilted padding, and tossed it to one of the youngest Ocelot bloods in the crowd like it was a major souvenir, which I guess it was.
I am Chacal! I declaimed. Everybody stared. I’ve gone to Xibalba and brought back the Razor Ball! I was overexcited and shifted into English. “By the bomes of Crom, you’re all horsemeat! Shop smart-shop S-Mart!” I was about to add that I was going to sic the United Fruit Company on them. Emerald Immanent was still down on the court behind us, shouting for his brothers to grab us, but he must have been still blocked by the Harpy invisibles. I stepped up onto the first swell in the sea of steps. My little squad followed my lead, surrounding me in an oval formation. Eight steps. Nine. The first tier intersected with a second tide of clear-edged waves and ripples, black flats and green risers scraped and buffed and finished like a Noguchi marble. And the Ocelots let us through. I guess we had a fear edge because-for most of them at least-it really was more like I’d transformed into Chacal than like I’d just been in hiding and then disguised. There was a kind of incomprehension of the whole idea of disguise; even when people wore the costumes of the gods, they were taking on that identity, not just dressing up, and it was a very serious deal. Plus, a lot of the people around the end zone were visitors to Ix, and weren’t prepared for a fight. And of course we were still officially their guests in a place that took hospitality seriously. We were just eight little
