Regardless of the way the movement tightened the rope around my neck, I slumped forward in despair, not unlike the girl with the spindle. A small part of me had been clinging to the remote hope that I might be bought for something other than a hideous death at the top of a pyramid, but now I saw how illusory that was.
‘I’ll give you twenty capes.’
Lizard gasped. He stared at the man before recollecting himself just in time to respond in a weak voice: ‘Each?’
The man said nothing.
Dog plucked urgently at his colleague’s cloak. ‘Careful!’ he hissed. ‘Remember what his lordship said…’
‘I know, I know, but twenty capes . .
‘Thirty.’
Now it was the stranger’s turn to start and stare.
The new offer had come from someone standing behind him. I could just make out a tall figure with his hair piled up over his head in the fashion we called ‘pillar of stone’. It was the style of a seasoned warrior.
My stomach lurched as I thought of the Otomies. Was this one of the captain’s men? The hair was not quite right for an Otomi, though, and the voice was not one of those I had heard taunting me every day for as long as I could remember.
The commoner scowled at the newcomer. ‘All right. Thirty each!’
‘A hundred for the lot, then.’ The big man shouldered his way forward to stand next to his rival. His bright red netted cape, long blue labret and eagle feather headband showed that he had taken at least five captives in war and was reckoned a great fighter. And I suddenly realized that there was something vaguely familiar about him as well, although again I could not place it.
The two slave-dealers looked at each other, slack-jawed. They plainly had no idea what to do and were not helped by the fact that a small crowd of curious spectators was beginning to gather, drawn by this impromptu auction. After a morning spent desperately trying to attract customers, suddenly they had more than they knew what to do with.
Eventually Lizard turned to the bidders. He sighed regretfully. ‘Look, I’m sorry, but it’s not that simple. I can’t let these men go to just anybody, I told you. I’ve strict instructions about what they can be sold for, you see…’
‘These wouldn’t be any use for anything other than a cheap sacrifice,’ snapped the warrior.
‘Well, that’s it, you see. They have to be sold for sacrifice.
And besides. I’ve already got a buyer.’ So my suspicion about what Lord Feathered in Black was up to had been right.
‘Will he pay a hundred?’
‘Well, no.’
‘I’ll match that,’ the commoner cried suddenly. ‘And I promise you, they’ll all die. Slowly.’
‘How?’ Lizard asked suspiciously.
The man hesitated. ‘How? Er… arrows. You know, when the priests string them up and shoot them full of holes as an offering to the rain-god.’
Beside me, my Texcalan friend muttered: ‘You Aztec bastard.’
I was not sure whether he meant me, the slave-dealer or the commoner, but he had cause. The arrow sacrifice was perhaps even more unpleasant than the fire sacrifice, because there was no quick, clean kill with a flint knife at the end. The idea was to make the victim’s blood spurt violendy on the ground from as many wounds as possible, to resemble the rain the priests were trying to encourage. They would keep us alive for as long as they could, shooting small bird arrows into our arms and legs, until we stopped wriggling and bled to death.
‘Why these three?’
‘They’re ideal. The big ones are for the novices, for practice. The runt in the middle will be harder to hit, a challenge, better sport for the more experienced archer.’
‘Hang on,’ the warrior growled. ‘I can do better than that. And I bid a hundred first, remember.’
The slave-dealers were speechless. It was left to a small boy at the front of the rapidly growing crowd, a lad too young even to be wearing a breechcloth under his short brown cape, to call out: ‘Go on, then, what are you going to do to them?’
My fellow slave with the ragged lip and ears uttered a dangerous noise in the back of his throat. I wondered nervously if the two Texcalans were about to launch themselves at the crowd, dragging me with them into the middle of a one-sided fight, but neither moved.
‘Cut their hearts out, of course.’
‘Why is that better?’ Lizard asked. ‘That happens to nearly all sacrifices.’
‘Because the people I represent are Mayans, that’s why. They don’t slice cleanly through the breastbone like Aztecs; they go in under the ribcage. So they’ll have to pull their guts out of the way first! Only it takes practice, see. Very particular, their gods are, and their priests don’t do nearly as many as ours, so they need some five bodies to hone their skills on before trying the real thing.’
‘All the same. Lizard,’ Dog murmured, ‘one hundred cloaks…’
‘Look, do you want the money or not?’
‘I’ll go to a hundred and five!’
The big man’s eyes widened as if in shock. The slave-dealers looked at him expectantly, but he said nothing. For a distinguished warrior he looked strangely unsure of himself. He stared at the ground, then shot a look of hatred at his rival, and finally turned his back, wrapping his cloak around him.
At last he said softly: ‘I can’t go that high.’
‘They’re mine, then!’ the successful bidder crowed.
The other looked over his shoulder, straight at me. He seemed about to say something but then, apparently thinking better of it, pushed his way through the crowd and left.
The slave-dealers looked at each other. ‘What do you think?’ said Lizard.
‘A hundred and five,’ Dog repeated dreamily. He must have been thinking that this was far more than he had expected to make all day.
‘Yes, but what about
