Half-crouching, I cautiously lifted my eyes above the top of the bin. From here I could see to the corner I had just rounded.
A moment later I realised I had not been mistaken. I could hear hoarse breathing, the scratching sound of a sandaled foot on the path, and another noise I could not identify, a faint mixture of creaking and rustling. Then with a thrill of terror I realised I could see my follower as well as hear him, even with eyes watering from the dust in the maize bin.
Something stood at the corner: a large, irregular shape, taller than a man and bulkier. It seemed to be swivelling this way and that, like a hunting animal seeking its quarry. There was nothing animal-like in its ponderous, jerky movements, however; nor in the one thing I recognised about it, a thin pale sliver of something catching the faint twilight as it turned. It was the unmistakable gleam of an obsidian blade. Whatever manner of creature was seeking me, he – or it – was carrying a sword.
We stayed like that until I was gritting my teeth against the pain in my awkwardly bent legs. I reached up and clung to the top edge of my hiding place, to take some of my weight on my hands, and was rewarded with splinters in my fingers. My bladder began to ache and still the thing stood there, only paces away.
All I could see distinctly was the sword. I could not take my eyes off its obsidian blades, lethally sharp razors set into the weapon’s hardwood shaft, giving it a cutting edge that could sever a man’s neck with one blow or peel off his skin in layers. They fascinated me so much, each blade catching the light in turn, that I did not at first grasp that they were moving slowly towards me.
And then the monster was almost upon me. I ducked quickly, lowering my head and crouching deep inside the maize bin in silent terror while I listened to the creature’s slow, heavy breathing.
When the breathing formed itself into a throaty whisper and the whisper became a word, something between a question and a gloat, I knew I was a dead man.
‘Yaotl?’
At the sound of my own name I started so violently that my hiding place shuddered. The thing outside could not have failed to notice that. Even as I threw myself frantically against the side of the wooden container, trying to knock it over in a desperate bid to make it roll into the nearest canal, I heard the whisper transformed into a roar of rage and triumph.
The first blow knocked my teeth together and set my ears ringing. With a crack of shattered wood the maize bin split. I heard a swish of air as the sword was raised for a second strike. I slithered from the wreckage, hands and feet scrabbling to propel me out of the way with all the strength they still had. Then came another crash as blades sank once again into soft wood. More blows followed, each more frantic than the last, but now they had a different note, duller, with a hollow ring. The monster had got his sword embedded in the remains of the maize bin and was swinging the whole lot against a wall in an effort to free the weapon.
I seized my chance. I scrambled to my feet and ran. Luckily whatever sound I made was inaudible beneath the noise my assailant was making, the thumping and splintering and his own shouted curses.
I stumbled blindly through the streets until there were no streets and I was wading knee deep in icy water and pushing aside stiff rushes that were taller than I was, and even then I kept going, never daring to look back but imagining the huge figure trudging relentlessly behind me, slashing at the stems with great sweeping strokes of its sword.
Eventually my legs gave up, slipping from under me in the mud and pitching me face-down in muddy water. I hauled myself out by my arms, using them to drag my sodden, exhausted body onto a foul-smelling pile of muck that had been dredged from the lake bottom to make a channel for a farmer’s or a fisherman’s canoe. It only just broke the surface of the water but it was the only more or less dry place I could find.
I knew I had to go on. I could not allow myself to rest here, in what might be my enemy’s country, among the wetlands where the captain was rumoured to lurk. Gritting my teeth against the pain in my legs, I urged them to lift me up once more.
It was no good. I was at the end of my strength.
I collapsed on top of the heap of silt and was unconscious in an instant.
TWO RAIN
1
One of the rituals we priests had had to undergo to appease the rain god had involved throwing ourselves into the icy water of the lake at night and then running, naked, back to the House of Tears, where we would sit, shivering, until noon, covered only by a thin blanket. I had done this every year for twenty years, and it may have saved my life, for if my body had not been hardened by my priest’s training the chill and the damp might have killed me long before the sun had climbed high enough to share any of his warmth with me.
I groaned, squinted and turned my head away from the brilliant disc. I had no idea where I was or how I had got here, and for a moment did not care. It troubled me that the surface I lay on was so rough and soggy, as if someone had taken both my sleeping mat and the roof of my house away in
