‘We need to get her home,’ Spotted Eagle asserted. ‘Then we’ll look for the other things.’
Merely thinking about descending into the hole to try to drag the body clear of the mud that still clung to it was enough to make me feel ill. ‘I suppose we do,’ I said. ‘Though we could do with some help.’
‘Or at least some tools,’ Kite suggested. ‘Are there any in your father’s shed?’
‘Spades, digging sticks,’ Spotted Eagle replied absently. ‘And I think there’s an old rabbit’s fur mantle in there too. He wears it when it’s very cold out here in the winter. I’ll show you.’ For a moment I did not think he was going to move from the graveside, but then he turned and dragged his feet ponderously towards the open entrance to the shelter. ‘He kept all sorts of junk in here...’ He vanished inside the decrepit little building.
For a long moment we heard nothing more from him. Then he began yelling.
Kite and I stared at each other for a moment, while we strained to catch the words, although they were muffled by the walls of the shed. Finally we both rushed towards the doorway just as Spotted Eagle appeared in it. I staggered to a halt, slipping and stumbling in the sodden, churned up ground, and just managed to avoid running full tilt into the blades of the young man’s sword.
His eyes were wide open. His mouth was opening and closing but now no words were coming out, only faint gasps.
‘What is it?’ Kite demanded, before pushing him aside and launching himself through the doorway.
The youth staggered sideways. He turned to stare at me. ‘It’s Red Macaw!’ he cried in a strangled voice. ‘He’s in there!’
6
I do not know what I expected to find when I followed Kite through the doorway. All I knew was that Spotted Eagle had seen his father’s old antagonist – his mother’s former lover – in here, but I had no idea in what guise. For all I knew he might be got up as a sorcerer, his face painted black like a priest’s, or transformed into some grotesque but still somehow identifiable version of himself, the warrior fused with the monster.
I did not see him at all to begin with, because it was too dark and my attention was caught by Kite. The policeman stood in the centre of the hut, hacking at the roof with his sword, while a litter of reeds and damp moss fell around his feet.
‘Need some light in here,’ he said, ‘and watch where you’re putting your feet!’ Automatically I looked down.
There was just enough room in here for a man to lie full length if his head were wedged into one corner and his feet jammed into the corner opposite. That was how I found Red Macaw.
At first I thought he was dead. An unpleasant smell rose from him; a smell of blood, rot and shit, worse than the inside of a temple after a busy day’s sacrificing to the gods.
Kite wrenched a great lump of material from the roof, which I had to bat away to prevent it from landing on the man on the floor. In the daylight that flooded the space around us, I could make out two things. The first was that Red Macaw was still alive, for his eyes rolled weakly and a faint tremor shook his body. The second was that he did not have much time left.
He was naked except for the tattered, filthy remains of a breechcloth. Just above the garment, his flesh had been torn open. A fat grey loop of gut peeked obscenely through the hole. The floor would have been damp anyway, but now it was soaked with his blood.
I lifted my eyes from his ruined abdomen to his face. It was grey, the skin stretched so tightly over the bones that it looked as if it might burst. Dried blood caked the corners of his mouth and his upper lip. I would not have recognised him from our one meeting, but Kite and Spotted Eagle obviously knew him better.
His lips moved. The tongue that appeared between them was black.
‘He wants a drink,’ Kite suggested.
I thought about the medicine I had had to learn at the priest house and the wounds I had seen treated or neglected in the army. ‘Even if you could get clean water it would probably finish him off.’
‘Wouldn’t that be kinder?’ Spotted Eagle spoke from behind me. He was peering cautiously through the doorway.
Kite looked at him sharply. ‘Don’t stand there! Someone’s got to keep watch outside! Whoever did this may still be around, remember?’
The young man vanished. I dropped to my knees, staring into the haggard face. The eyes tried to swivel to meet mine, but they kept rolling to one side.
‘Who did this?’ I demanded.
The lips moved silently.
I looked up a Kite. I felt sick, not so much from the sight and smell of the dying man as from what I knew I had to do. But I told myself it would make no difference now in any case. ‘You were right. He’s asking for water.’
‘What do I do?’
‘Find a bowl, or a cup, or anything.’
I turned back to Red Macaw’s agonised features as the policeman rummaged through a pile of effects in one corner of the hut. Slowly and loudly I said: ‘We’ll get you water. But you have to tell me: who did this to you?’
I did not think he had heard me. The eyes rolled slowly in their sockets. Eventually they came to rest pointing in my direction, although they looked dull and unfocused.
The lips moved silently again.
‘What’s he saying?’ the policeman demanded.
‘I’m not sure. It’s one word. And again... Shit, he’s saying “Yaotl”!’ For a moment the shock of seeing my own name form on the dying man’s lips threatened to overwhelm me,
