Simon Levack - Shadow of the Lords

‘But if it was dark when they escaped …’ Whatever else you might say about my master’s steward, he was persistent.

‘What’s that over there?’ I asked. ‘Looks like smoke to me.’

A thin streak of smoke, the sort of thing you might expect to see rising from a pipe that had been packed too tightly, had appeared over the top of the rushes in front of us.

‘It is,’ Handy confirmed. He looked at me. ‘I think that’s from the fire the Otomies made.’

We were very close to the bank now: so close that I could see the water below us changing colour, from dark blue to a cloudy green, and hear the buzzing noise of the flies and mosquitoes that lived in the shelter of the tall plants. Ducks paddled listlessly in and out of the reeds, their feet just visible below the water’s surface, little dark angular shapes making eddies in the scum around them.

‘Where do we go now?’ I began to ask, but the question died in my throat before I had finished asking it.

Something whistled through the air. The boat shuddered. Handy, standing up in the bows, cried out in alarm. An instant later came a scream and a loud splash and suddenly there was no sign of the steward.

I grabbed both sides of the canoe and clung to them as the vessel lurched from side to side. The water was in turmoil, with ducks streaking across its surface in all directions and a large shape floundering noisily about just under its surface.

‘What’s happening?’ I cried. ‘Where’s the steward?’

‘He jumped in.’ Handy dropped on to one knee and reached out over the water towards the submerged creature splashing about beside us. ‘Bet he can’t swim.’

For a moment I hoped he was intending to shove the steward under and hold him there until his struggles stopped, butthen a hand came up, groped blindly towards one of his arms and seized it with enough force to throttle a dog.

‘Help me, won’t you?’ he grunted as he hauled the sodden, helpless object towards the boat. I did not move. I thought I was doing enough by restraining myself from bashing the steward over the head with the paddle. Instead I looked around for whatever had attacked us. It took only a moment to find it.

‘Harpoon.’ Handy had seen it at the same time: a short hardwood spear projecting from the boat’s side, near the bow. Its flint tip was buried deep in the wood. ‘You were lucky, Yaotl — a hand’s breadth or so higher and that would have gone through your spleen!’

A length of rope trailed from the spear’s shaft. I tugged at it with my fingers, making the rope rise dripping from the water, and then dropped it suddenly when I realized that our assailant must be at the other end of it.

‘Who threw this?’ I whispered hoarsely. We were floating in plain sight of the bank and had made enough noise already to scare every bird on the western side of the lake, but I still felt the urge to be quiet.

‘I’d take a wild guess,’ retorted Handy drily, ‘and say it was the man standing over there among the rushes. It’s the throwing-stick and the rope he’s holding. They sort of give it away.’

I had not seen or heard him but that was hardly surprising. An Otomi’s favoured tactic when confronted by the enemy was to rush screaming towards him and drag him noisily to the earth by his hair, but that did not mean he would have forgotten all of his hunting skills. Perhaps he had been lying in wait for us all along or perhaps, as soon as he had heard us coming, he had crept towards the shoreline to greet us. Either way here he was, and I felt myself caught off guard.

He was tall and spare, without a sign of any excess flesh under his dark, weather-beaten skin. He wore only abreechcloth, his full warrior costume having presumably been discarded in favour of being able to move about without having it rustle on the ground behind him or against the tall plants on either side. He carried no sword, but that gave me no comfort. One look at his hairstyle — the tall column that crowned his forehead and the loose locks flowing extravagantly over the nape of his neck — assured me that he could probably have killed all of us with his bare hands.

Following Handy’s gaze, I took in the throwing-stick, a long plain length of wood with a notch at the end for the spear. The warrior had been hoping to catch his breakfast and we had got in his way.

He watched our antics in silence. While Handy hauled the spluttering, coughing steward over the side, I took up the paddle to propel us towards the bank.

Handy and I jumped into the water, tugged our feet out of the muck beneath it and waded ashore. The steward fell in, got to his knees and began to be violently sick.

Only when he had finished retching and stood up, pulling his waterlogged cloak around him in an effort to restore his dignity, did the Otomi deign to speak.

‘Who are you?’

‘Lord Feathered in Black is my master,’ the steward gasped, ‘and this is …’

‘I didn’t ask you!’ the stranger snarled. ‘I know perfectly well who you are and what your master wants. What’s he got to say?’ He nodded towards me.

‘I’m Yaotl,’ I said. ‘I’m the Chief Minister’s slave, and this here is a retainer of his, Handy. We were just looking for …’ Suddenly inspiration died on me like a plant withering for lack of water and manure, and I found I was left floundering helplessly. ‘Just looking for …’

‘A man and a boy?’

‘Have you found them?’ the steward asked eagerly. My stomach lurched fearfully at the thought that the Otomies might already have found their prey, or the boy at least, and my son might even now be on his way back to my master, trussed like a deer, shivering with pain from whatever the warriors had done to him and terror at the tortures the Chief Minister was intending to inflict.

‘No,’ the Otomi said sourly. He bent down and tugged sharply at his rope. The spear at the other end splashed into the water, making me wonder how much strength it took to pull it free with so little effort. ‘Not a trace of them. Spent the whole of yesterday wading through this muck. Nothing. The lads up in the hills behind us haven’t done any better, but at least they kept their feet dry!’ He scowled at each of us in turn as he reeled in his rope. ‘So old Black Feathers decided we needed some help, did he?’ There was no need to ask how much help he thought we were likely to be. ‘You’d better come with me. You can tell my captain why the duck he was going to have for breakfast is happily paddling away on the wrong side of the valley!’

The steward pursed his lips dubiously at the prospect of meeting a squad of hungry warriors. ‘We want to show you something first,’ he said hastily.

‘Really? What is it — a side of venison?’

‘Yaotl thinks he knows where the two you’re looking for went.’

The Otomi looked me up and down. ‘Experienced tracker, is he?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘it’s just that …’

‘Only we could do with one. Look, we’re not used to this sneaking-about stuff, you see? Show me some Texcalan scumbag who thinks he’s hard enough to take me on and I’ll show you what I can do with him, but following a trail through the marshes isn’t my idea of fun, I can tell you!’

Handy, loyal as ever, took up the steward’s theme. ‘Well then, Yaotl here’s your man. He could track a bird through the air!’

‘Wait a moment!’ I cried, alarmed. I could see my plan to mislead both the steward and the Chief Minister’s warriors succeeding altogether too well. What would happen if they expected me to lead them to their quarry and found out that I had no more idea of where to start looking than they had?

The Otomi looked at me. ‘Quite right,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘we can’t just go running around on my say-so. We ought to go and see the boss first.’ With that, he turned and vanished into the rushes, leaving only a small gap between the tall, swaying plants as a clue to the direction he had gone in.