David Gilman - Blood Sun

Tree Walker, more muscular than Xavier, used the top of his bicep to hit it back on the sloping wall toward Setting Star, who pivoted like a gymnast, took the ball onto her knees, fell back and flicked it above her head. It was too low, its weight making it impossible to move with any great degree of skill. It would not be long before trying to push the solid ball of rubber would exhaust or injure them.

Guards and warriors whistled and cheered. They beat drums and blew conch-shell trumpets. Their yelling faces and thunderous roars broke through in waves to Max as he fought the deafening sound of pounding blood in his ears. It was like a ribald crowd at an FA Cup final, only there was more to lose than the cup-and there would be no medal for the runners-up.

Xavier had football skills, and if anyone could keep the ball off the ground, he could. He outran Max and Tree Walker, his skinny frame sluicing sweat, his long hair flicking droplets to the ground as he twisted and turned, and on more than one occasion saved each of the others from dropping the ball.

It was, Max realized, an amazing achievement for the slightly built Latino boy. How much longer could any of them keep going in this crippling heat? Who would be the one to die?

Max could see Xavier was tiring. He had retrieved the ball and, in what had to be a near impossibility with a ball that size and weight, bounced it from knee to knee. He cried out, “Max!”

With an effort Max would never have expected of the boy, he got the ball high enough onto his chest, dropped it again onto his knee and then hefted his scrawny leg upward so the ball was in place for a header. He jumped, making contact, and aimed the ball directly to Max.

Then Xavier sank to his knees. He was out of the game. It was down to Max and the other two now. Max struck the ball with his shoulder, and it felt as though he had been punched by someone twice his size. Muscles and tendons would not be able to last much longer. Faces blurred; Max felt giddy. He saw the children screaming, watched as Flint waved his hat and roared encouragement, as the guards in their war paint became a surreal and macabre tapestry.

The ball!

It was in the air. Tree Walker had kicked himself against the side of the wall, powered into it from a low angle and struck it with his elbow. His arm snapped. He writhed in agony.

Setting Star was too far away. She ran like a sprinter out of the blocks. The rising cacophony became deafening. Tree Walker would die. He was the last to touch the ball. She dived in a hopeless attempt to catch the ball and amazingly got an arm to it. It skidded against the side wall, caught the pockmarked face of a gargoyle and spun away into no-man’s-land. None of the players would reach it. Setting Star would die for her brother.

In a startlingly brief moment, Flint saw Max’s face. The whole world stopped for that one blink of an eye as, in some kind of shocked understanding, he realized something about Max had altered. Every muscle in his body had contracted, a surge of power gathered down his back, his shoulders hunched, his eyes narrowed, and his teeth bared into a snarl.

Orsino Flint knew he was looking into the ch’ulel of the beast.

In three catlike strides, covering a huge distance, the ragged boy from England launched himself and leapt like a predator toward the stricken girl and the ball that was now only inches from the ground. There was a collective gasp from the crowd at the shock of seeing the impossible.

Silence fell.

Max’s attack, for that is what it was, never wavered. He stretched out; his sinews demanded he stop. The rush of air told a part of his brain that he was still off the ground.

He was too late!

The ball was on the ground.

Almost.

Max’s fingers curled like a jaguar claw and caught the edge of its weight. No human hand, let alone a boy’s, could stop it from rolling onto the grass. But Max’s did. It dug into the impenetrable, it squeezed the uncrushable, and it threw the ball of death clear from the girl.

The children cried out. The guards and warriors bellowed their approval.

They had their victim. The ball rolled away.

Max Gordon had sacrificed himself.

Riga clawed his way forward. The cheering had stopped, but now the jungle exposed the hidden city, and he followed the watercourses down the hillsides toward the blind side of a high pyramid where smoke and incense swirled across a small group of men who stood before a sacrificial stone.

The tumbling water would obscure any noise he made-not that he intended to make any-and he could see that one of the channels fed a waterwheel in a building adjacent to the pyramid. It had no doors, but the entrance was pitch-black. No light penetrated it. Maybe that was the way to get into this ancient settlement without being spotted.

Riga was no stranger to house-to-house fighting. He made his way down, scanning the ground for Max.

And then he saw him.

The guards had quickly surrounded Max and, as he staggered to his feet, made it clear by pointing their spears that he should move forward toward the huge steps of the pyramid.

Flint ran forward and helped the exhausted Xavier to his feet. “You did well, boy.”

Xavier nodded, grateful for the compliment from the man who had always been an enemy. After a moment, he got his bearings, watching the children run to Tree Walker and Setting Star. Max was already thirty meters away, surrounded by the grinning, joyful warriors. Now there would be blood.

“Max, no …,” Xavier whispered.

“We can’t help him now, son. We have to find a way out of here. There might be a chance when they’re distracted …” Flint did not allow himself to finish the sentence.

“When they kill Max, you mean? No, no, we have to do something. We have to,” Xavier insisted.

But the brief thought of bravely trying to rescue Max was cut short as the guards turned back to Xavier and the others. They were to be herded along as witnesses to the sacrifice.

Max began the long climb upward. The steps were chest-high, and he had to lift himself up with his arms and drag himself up each level. This alone, without the exertion of the ball game, would have exhausted anyone. Perhaps it was designed so that the victim would have no fight left in him once he reached the sacrificial stone at the top of the pyramid.

He had to concentrate! He had to use every breath to feed his body, to hold on to his remaining strength. And each time he climbed higher, he looked around him. If nothing else, he would get to see the surrounding countryside, the other buildings, places his mother might have been. Perhaps she, too, had escaped from this terrible place. The thick curtain of crimson mist was beyond the perimeter of the buildings, and he felt the air grow hotter from the molten lava. The jungle sizzled and he could hear rocks cracking as the lava cooled.

Water tumbled down the hills through the trees and disappeared into the ground. There was no sign of any escape route. The sun was blistering; Max was weak from lack of food and water, and he was desperately thirsty. His knees and elbows were badly grazed and painful, and he could feel the bruises forming where the ball had struck his arms and chest. It felt as if he had been beaten with a baseball bat.

He glanced down and saw the others, under guard, watching him. He did not want to die like this and hoped against hope that at the top of the pyramid, the boy who wore his mother’s necklace might reach out compassionately and save him.

Crunching fear twisted his stomach. Had his mother been sacrificed? Was this the terror his father had run away from?

If you’ve got one breath left in your body, then you have a chance. Don’t die like a lamb to the slaughter, Max. Keep fighting, son. It’s your life. Don’t let the killers and the thugs take it easily from you .