By the time his body hit the ground I was on my feet, throwing myself towards the captain and Nimble, but the captain was not there any more. He had leaped backwards, ducking under a second dart that came near enough to part his hair.
With a snarl, the great warrior stood up, swung the arm holding the club and flung the weapon overarm towards the roof of the house.
The club made a clumsy projectile, but it seemed not to Matter. Out of the corner of my eye I saw it spinning end over end as it cleared the top of the house wall, and I heard the sickening soft thump and the agonized shriek of the man on the roof as it struck home. A moment later a dark shape loomed overhead, and the body pitched forward and landed on top of me, smashing me into the dirt and showering me in still more blood.
Get off!’ I cried unreasonably, twisting under the weight of the limp corpse.
The captain was still moving. He crouched and spun like a ball-game player making a difficult return, plucked the dart that had missed him from where it had fallen, jumped to his feet again and hurled the missile with all his might. He had no throwing-stick and no need of one. There was no scream from the rooftop this time, but the Otomi’s triumphant cry told me that he had found his target.
‘Any more of you bastards out there?’ he roared, in a voice that might have been heard in Tlacopan on the far side of the lake.
No answer came out of the night.
Darting over to his dead comrade, he plucked the sword from the Texcalan’s limp hand and turned towards Nimble and me. ‘You two are going to pay for this!’
I was still struggling with the corpse that lay on top of me. Limp arms and legs seemed to strike out at me as I tried to roll it to one side. To my horror, I saw Nimble standing up but swaying slightly as if stunned, staring through uncomprehending eyes at the warrior bearing down on him.
‘Nimble!’ I screamed. ‘Run!’
His head turned sharply at the sound of my voice. ‘Father?’
‘Too late!’ crowed the Otomi, raising his sword just as I finally kicked myself free of the mass of limp flesh.
Something flew through the air from beyond the broken back wall of the courtyard. It hit the captain on the cheek and clattered to the ground, rolling to a stop by my feet: a stone.
I looked at the wall and the open space beyond it. A face there looked back at me for an instant before vanishing. I gasped: it was a small face, with a grotesquely high forehead and crossed eyes.
The Otomi whirled around with a cry of rage. ‘Who threw that? So you didn’t all run away!’
He sprang towards the back of the courtyard, his sandal s clapping the ground and his sword swinging as he cleared the wall in a single bound.
Nimble was still staring at me. I took a step towards him before I froze, suddenly horror-struck.
I slapped my son on the arm to bring him round. ‘We’ve got to get after him!’ I shouted.
He had a hand pressed to one of his temples. ‘Must have hit my head when I fell,’ he muttered. Then he stared at me. ‘Get after him? Why?’
‘Because Little Hen’s out there!’
His jaw dropped. ‘But…’
‘She must have followed us! Didn’t I say I thought we were being followed? We need her, Nimble! She’s the solution to all of this!’
He looked blankly at me for about a heartbeat, and then my words seemed to register. We ran together towards the wall, scrambling over the shattered masonry into the wasteland behind the house.
I could not see the captain, but I could hear him clearly, thrashing about lower down on the overgrown bank, bellowing incoherent war cries.
‘What’s he doing that for?’ Nimble asked. ‘He’s telling Little Hen exactly where he is!’
‘He’s out of his mind,’ I replied. ‘He thinks he’s fighting a battle. An Otomi doesn’t sneak up on people; his enemies usually submit as soon as they realize who they’re up against! If those poor sods back at the house had had any idea what they were dealing with, they wouldn’t have tried anything. Come on — we have to get down there.’
We picked our way gingerly over the uneven ground. Beyond the stream and the hillside below us, I could make out the vast expanse of Lake Tetzcoco, its surface pale against its hark surroundings, and then I saw something that shocked me: a massive black shape, human, moving back and forth in front of the lake. The captain was not ten paces away. He was still roaring and wielding his sword.
I reached out to catch Nimble’s arm to warn him. ‘He can’t see us,’ I hissed. ‘We both go for him at once. Don’t try to go for the sword, just get him down! Ready?’
I paused and took a deep breath.
‘Now!’ I whispered, and without another sound we threw ourselves down the slope.
The Otomi heard nothing above the sound of his own shouting. The first he knew of our presence was when both of us crashed into him with all our combined weight.
It was not enough.
A lesser man would have fallen, bringing himself and his attackers down in a tangle of arms and legs, but not the captain. He staggered but kept his footing, spinning around with a cry of shock and outrage. I fell, thrown aside by his turn and hitting the ground with an impact that jarred my shoulder. Nimble clung on, with his arms around the roaring warrior’s neck as the man gyrated this way and that in his efforts to throw him off.
‘Nimble!’ I cried, clambering to my feet. ‘The sword! Watch out for his sword!’
The Otomi’s hands were free. I
