Slowly, Rippeth rose in the lead and eased out into the clearing. He scoured the light gap down the sight of his pistol, then finally gave a wave to indicate they were safe to leave their hiding spots.
Leo and Colton hesitantly eased to their feet ahead. Jay did the same. He still didn't understand the need for such overt prudence, but he followed the others at a snail's pace out into the open.
'He brought the alpaca down here to graze,' Sam said.
Jay looked down. His initial assessment had been mostly correct. The weeds hadn't been trimmed, but grazed down to nubs in sections.
'Why did we all have to hide?' he asked. 'I mean, there was only one of him and there are ten of us. What could he possibly have done?'
'We could easily have frightened him,' Colton said impatiently. 'Then the next thing you know, we have natives crawling all over us. They know we're here. When they're ready, they'll either come to us on their own terms, or just continue to hide and follow us from a distance until we've passed out of their territory.'
Jay nodded. It made sense, but it didn't exactly make for a good documentary. He wasn't rooting for an attack by a tribe of bow-and-arrow-wielding savages by any means, but they needed some element of drama and danger to make the film really sing.
While the others discussed how long they should wait before continuing along the path to keep from spooking the lone man with the alpaca, Jay raised the camera and wandered the perimeter of the light gap, hoping to encounter something remotely interesting. There were stumps where trees had been cleared, and about a million hoof prints in the damp earth, but it was otherwise unremarkable.
Raindrops tapped his shoulders and drained in cool lines through his hair, down his neck, and along his spine. It felt wonderful after so many hours of being sticky with sweat from the humidity. As long as this didn't turn into another tropical deluge, he'd be happy if the storm never stopped.
He panned along the edge of the jungle one final time, and was just about to stop recording when something caught his eye. At first, he thought it was another one of those strange butterflies, but it appeared to hover in the shadows at the base of a tree trunk without flapping its wings. He zoomed in and stumbled backward in surprise. Another painted man crouched in the darkness, unmoving, watching Jay even as he filmed him. A sharp-toothed grin slashed the man's face, and then he vanished.
'Hey,' Jay called without turning. 'There's another one out there.'
He panned the camera from left to right, but there was no sign of the native.
The forest had fallen quiet, save the soft sound of rain dripping from the higher reaches onto the groundcover.
'Are you sure?' Colton asked.
'Of course I'm sure. I have him on film. He was right over there.' Jay pointed vaguely off to his right, and turned to face the direction from which they had come. A blur of black streaked between two trees. 'There's another.'
The rest of the group closed in around him, their conversation forgotten.
There was more movement off to his left. He whirled in time to see another shadow vanish into the brush.
'They're all around us,' Jay said.
'Stay calm,' Colton whispered. He placed a steadying hand on Jay's shoulder. 'Everyone form a tight line. We're too exposed here. We need to get out of the open.'
Rippeth resumed the point, flanked by Colton. Morton brought up the rear, walking backward, while Sorenson and Webber slipped into the middle of the group with the poles that supported the crate on their shoulders, ready to drop it and go for their weapons at a moment's notice. Together they advanced into the unnatural twilight beneath the trees. No one spoke. The tension mounted.
Jay kept the camera to his eye, but moved it to either side of the path too fast for the aperture to reconcile. He saw motion in every shadow, and felt the weight of unseen eyes.
Why didn't they just attack?
And then it hit him.
They were being herded, driven like cattle, but toward what?
V
During the half-hour after leaving the clearing, they had walked in an unnerving silence. Sam tried not to think about her encounter with Merritt in the bushes, although she was acutely aware of the lingering sensation of his warm breath on her lips. Best to just keep him behind her and focus on what lay ahead, which proved easier said than done. The natives had never come right out and shown themselves, yet they made their presence continually felt in sporadic glimpses of dark forms moving through the shadows and the snapping of twigs when she knew good and well that these men could move through the forest without making a sound. What exactly were they doing? Sam and the others were being ushered toward something, or were they instead being driven away? It wasn't until they arrived at an impasse that she had her answer.
A great wall rose thirty feet above their heads. It was covered so densely with blooming vines that she had to sweep them aside to reveal the construct formed of three-foot cubes of chiseled limestone. The abutment reached up into the canopy where it blended into the branches and leaves, and extended as far as they could see in either direction. Her heart skipped a beat. It was a fortification, but what was on the other side that needed protection?
Dozens of moss-covered stone columns capped with charred iron grates stood sentry every twenty-five feet or so.
'Over here,' Rippeth called. He had opened a curtain of vines to expose a dark gap in the wall.
Merritt stepped up beside him, and together they pulled away the vegetation to uncover a rectangular opening. It was roughly six feet tall and three feet wide. A doorway.
'What now?' Galen asked. His face had paled to a chalky white.
The rustling sound from the bushes behind them made the decision for them.
Rippeth held a finger to his lips for all of them to see, then raised his pistol and walked slowly out of sight. Sorenson followed, face grim, gun raised. After a brief hesitation, the rest fell in behind them, leaving Morton and Webber to defend their rear.
Sam trailed closely behind Leo through the veil of vines on the opposite side of the wall, and emerged into shadows beside a large stone that appeared to fit into the gap through which they had just passed. It was attached to a system of pulleys and primitive wooden gears.
She drew a sharp intake of breath. It felt as though she had stepped through some invisible temporal barrier into the past. All of her professional life had been spent chasing history, and here she stood face-to-face with it in all its glory.
'It's amazing,' she whispered, looking this way and that, absorbing every minute detail in hopes of committing it to memory.
Dahlia and Jay funneled in behind her. Sam heard the director whisper for her cameraman to stay at her hip, to record her reactions and get footage of everything she so much as looked at. The recorder started to purr and she forgot all about them in her excitement.
So much of her work was composed of guesswork predicated upon supposition. Her job was to piece together the lives of people who were no longer around to tell their own tales, and now she had the opportunity to evaluate just how right, and wrong, she had been. She forgot all about the fact that she was being herded into the fortified city.
It reminded her of the Chachapoya fortress at Kuelap, but with an undeniable Inca influence. The central path upon which they crossed into the city was several feet lower than everything else around it. Circular huts crafted from the same rock as the fortifications had been built upon elevated stone platforms and surrounded by cornices, with a single opening for a door facing the main walkway. While maybe only six feet tall and twelve feet in diameter, their conical, thatch roofs rose just as high as the fortress walls into the overhanging trees, where they
