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Chapter 4

Sacrifice


Camp Peterbilt


April 12, 1005 CE


“Okay, the sun’s down,” said Melanie, peering through the windshield of the Peterbilt.

Michael checked his wristwatch. “7:56 P.M.”

“Same as I’ve got,” said Alyssa. “Given the time of sunrise, I’d say that puts us sometime in late April, maybe early May. Either way, we haven’t reached the summer solstice yet.”

“Yay!” said Shane. “I don’t have to go back to school for at least three months.”

Alyssa smiled. “I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, girl, but from here on out you’re on home schooling time, which means summer vacation ends whenever your parents say it does.”

“That’s not fair! These things should be guided by fixed rules—like a constitution—not by the whims of tyrants.”

“When did your mother and I graduate to tyrant status?” asked Michael. “Last I heard—which was maybe an hour ago—we were still a paltry mom and dad. But you can cheer up, kid. For a while yet, your education’s going to lean heavily in practical directions.”

“Like what?”

“Like helping Alyssa make napalm bombs. Like helping me figure out how to make some kind of catapult. Like helping your mother design and build traps for rabbits and wild turkeys.”

Shane’s eyes got very round. “Oh, that’s cool. So you’re back to mom-and-dad status.”

“If I can change the subject,” said Alyssa, “when do you think anyone’s going to show up? For that matter, are we sure that they will?”

“Hell, who knows?” said Michael. “Not before ten o’clock, I wouldn’t think. The twilight won’t fade for another half hour or so, and they’ll probably wait until then before starting to move. I’m not sure how far they have to travel to get here, since we still don’t know where they live. But they’ll be moving quietly, which as dark as it’ll be, means slowly. As to whether they’ll try a sneak, they already did. They snuck up during the daylight, and then slunk away without saying hi. That indicates less than honorable intent, to my way of thinking. So, yes, I’m pretty confident that they will try to slip up closer in the night, unless they have some sort of taboo about night operations.”

“So when do we turn on the lights?”

“Let’s figure on doing a quick look-see with the spotlights at ten-thirty, and then every half hour after that.”

Melanie looked back at Alyssa, who was perched on the lower bunk. She was holding Michael’s rifle; seated to her right, Shane was holding Melanie’s. Each of them had a box of ammunition also. No one wanted to have to resort to the guns. But . . . no one knew what they were facing, either.

Alyssa shrugged. “Michael’s plan seems as good as any.”

All the lights were out in the cab, and it was getting darker as twilight faded. Michael glanced at his wristwatch again. “Damn, I didn’t think of this. My watch is an old-fashioned one where the hands go round and round. I can’t see it in the dark.”

Melanie frowned. “So’s mine.”

Alyssa clucked her tongue. “You do know we entered the twenty-first century more than three decades ago? Relax. My watch is digital. I’ll call out the time.”

* * *

“Ten-thirty,” said Alyssa. She spoke softly, almost in a whisper, even though no one on the ground outside the cab could possibly hear her unless she shouted.

Michael and Melanie both switched on their spotlights and, using the remotes, began scanning the area in front of the truck.

They didn’t have to spend more than a few seconds doing that. Four men—no, five—were caught in the glare. They were crouched down at the edge of the small clearing that the truck was parked in. They’d probably been there for some time, since they were no longer trying very hard to stay out of sight in the foliage.

To say they had startled expressions on their faces was putting it mildly. All of them except one had their bows ready, with nocked arrows, but not one of them even began to draw back the string. They just stared into the lights, as if paralyzed. Michael was reminded of times he’d visited his grandparents on their farm and his grandfather had taken him and his brother out at night to hunt rabbits and other crop-eating pests. His grandpa would drive slowly down the farm roads in the fields while one of the boys scanned the rows of crops with a spotlight. Any rabbit caught in the light would just freeze, whereupon the brother who had the gun duty would shoot the critter with a .22 semiautomatic. If you needed to take more than one shot to kill a motionless rabbit, you’d hear about it afterward. Grandpa Anderle had sarcasm down pat.

Michael already had the engine idling. Now he turned on the truck headlights—which were much brighter than the spotlights—revved the engine and pulled on the lanyard above the driver’s window that operated the air horn. That was an eighteen-wheeler’s horn, which was really LOUD. Between the lights suddenly coming on, the engine revving and the horn going off, their hope was that any skulkers would think the enormous monster in the dark had suddenly come awake.

And it was really, really pissed off.

It worked. All the men—there turned out to be seven of them—vanished almost instantly. Four of them fumbled and dropped their arrows. Two of them lost the grip on their bows as well. One had the presence of mind to recover it. The other just ran off.

They were all wearing what looked like peaked caps, not the stereotypical feathered headwear of Hollywood movies nor the turbans that were the characteristic headgear of southern Indian males of later centuries. In the dark, it was hard to make out the rest of their clothing, except that they all seemed to be wearing leggings, probably made of deer hide.

Within a few seconds, they were gone.

“Think they’ll come back?” asked Melanie.

“Not tonight,” said Alyssa, choking down a laugh that was partly amusement but mostly just relief.

“One of us will have to stay awake and on guard for the rest of the night,” said Michael. “I’ll take the first watch, from now until one o’clock, unless either of you wants it. The second watch can go from one to four in the morning and the third from four until seven.”

He shook his head. “But I’ll be really surprised if they come back. Not tonight, anyway. They’re going to need at least a day to settle their nerves and try to figure out another plan. Clearly, sneaking up on the sleeping demon ain’t gonna work.”

“I can stand watch!” said Shane.

“Me too!” chimed in Miriam. Norman didn’t say anything. He seemed to be unusually thoughtful for a child not yet five years old.

“You can stand watch with me, if you want to,” said Michael. “But not on your own, Shane.”

She muttered something that sounded like tyrant. But maybe it was errant. The younger children didn’t put up a protest when their mother explained in very clear and simple English that they weren’t doing anything for the rest of the night except getting some sleep.


Jabir


April 13, 1005 CE


They ran most of the way back to the village. And ran into Priyak, the village shaman who had accepted the influence of the Hocha priests.

Gada was less happy with the city, but it was undeniable that the priesthood of Hocha could tell when things were going to happen, when the sun would rise and where the stars would be, and they knew of drugs and medicines that healed the sick and sickened the well. He didn’t like them, and he didn’t like the gradual increase in the number of sacrifices, but he didn’t know how to counter them.

So he kept his mouth shut as the humiliated warriors were bullied by Priyak into allowing the sacrifice of two Kadlo girls to the monsters that had appeared on Jabir land.

Gada did have a word with a couple of Kadlo trackers, suggesting that they follow the tracks of the huge monster and its child back to where they came from.


Camp Peterbilt


April 15, 1005 CE


So far as any of the Americans could tell, no one from the native population of the area showed up the next day or the night that followed. Of course, they might have missed one or two observers, given the natives’ skill at moving unnoticed through wilderness. But it was unlikely they’d failed to spot a large party.

The following morning, though, an hour after sunrise, two figures could be seen coming up the shallow slope that led to the small clearing where the Peterbilt was parked. Using the binoculars, Melanie spotted three other people who remained on the rise near the river.

The people approaching them were making no effort to hide or move surreptitiously, and as they drew nearer it became clear that they were both women—and very young women at that. The hide skirts and leggings they were wearing could have been male apparel as well, but they were also bare-chested, which made their gender obvious.

“Look at that!” Shane exclaimed. “Their tits are showing!”

“Shane, don’t be rude when they get here. Different folks, different customs.”

“What are ‘tits’?” asked Norman.

Melanie chuckled. “Alyssa, you can handle that one.”

Alyssa explained the matter—quite smoothly, without stumbling; Melanie was impressed—the two young women came closer. When they were about fifty yards away, they stopped and looked back. They were now close enough that their expressions could be seen. Both of them were clearly scared and wanted nothing more than to flee back to where they came from.

Melanie wasn’t surprised. If she’d been in their position, she’d have been terrified.

“They’re just girls,” muttered Michael. “I don’t think either of them is more than sixteen or seventeen years old.”

Melanie had come to the same conclusion herself. “Do you think . . . maybe that’s a good sign. Sending teenage girls who are pretty clearly unarmed is about as nonthreatening a party to a parlay as you can imagine.”

“True,” said Alyssa. “But I can think of one alternative explanation, which is a lot grimmer.”

Michael grunted. “Sacrifices? Feed a couple of virgins to the demon, in hopes of propitiating the monster?”

“Something like that. Not long after we moved to Carbondale, Jerry and I and the kids went to visit the museum at Cahokia. It’s pretty damn impressive. But one of the things I remember is that archaeologists have uncovered several places where human sacrifice had been carried out.” She pursed her lips. “And most of the victims were young women.”

“Oh, swell,” said Melanie. “How large-scale were these sacrifices?”

“Well, nothing on the scale of the Aztecs, or any of the other Mesoamerican cultures. There was only one big site where sacrificial killing was carried out—only one that they’ve found, anyway. The sacrifices at other sites were much smaller in number. And they mostly seem to have taken place in the period between 1000 and 1200 CE.”

“What’s CE?” asked Shane.

“It stands for ‘Common Era,’” explained Alyssa. “What used to be called AD—Anno Domini.”

“Does that dating mean anything?” asked Michael.

Alyssa shrugged. “Archaeological data’s always hard to interpret, when you don’t have a written language to go with it. But that period was the peak of Cahokian power. It declined rapidly thereafter, and by 1400 the site had been abandoned. The point being that I think it’s really going to make a difference to us which period we’re in now. After looking at the planetary clock and the position of Barnard’s Star, I’m pretty sure we’re in 1005 CE. So about all we can hope for is that the more massive human sacrifices haven’t gotten started yet.”

“They’re coming forward again,” said Michael. “What do you think we should do?”

“If you guys eat them I’m going to be really upset,” said Shane. “Even if Dad did paint the truck to look like a dragon.”

That produced a burst of laughter in the cab, which by the grin on the twelve-year-old girl’s face was the result she was aiming for.

Looking out of the window, Melanie saw that the girls were less than thirty yards away now and were holding hands.

“Christ, they’ve got to be petrified. Well, we can put a stop to that, at least. Which one of us goes out there?”

“Probably not a good idea to send me,” said Michael.

“A three-hundred-pound troll?” said Melanie. “Not a good idea, even if you are clean-shaven. No, it’s got to be either me or Alyssa. Seeing a woman’s more likely to relax them.”

She and Alyssa eyed each other for a moment. Then Alyssa puffed out her cheeks and slowly exhaled the air. “Probably better if it was me,” she said. “I’m smaller than you are.” She glanced down at her hand. “The one possible drawback might be my skin color. It might seem strange to them.”

Melanie held up her hand. “My ancestry’s mostly Swedish. I’m about as much lighter-skinned than they are as you are darker. And I’m blonde, to boot. So I think that issue’s probably a wash. On the other hand . . . ”

Now she glanced at Alyssa’s chest. “Wearing the kind of clothes we do, our gender might not be immediately apparent to people who dress the way they do. That might tilt things in my direction, since . . . ah . . . ”

Alyssa chuckled. “It’s more likely that you’ll remind people of Jayne Mansfield than I will.”

“Well . . . ”

“There’s a simple solution to that problem. Switch places with me.” Once Alyssa was in the passenger’s seat of the truck, she began unbuttoning her blouse. “Help me get this bra off, Melanie. The cab’s a little cramped for this sort of thing.”

A few seconds later, she was nude from the waist up and climbing out of the cab. “Wish me luck.”

Watching her walk slowly toward the two girls, who had stopped again, Michael said, “I am really coming to like that woman. Running into her was a pure stroke of luck.”

“Yup,” said Melanie.

“Why is Mommy naked?” asked Miriam.

“Oh, boy,” said Melanie.

“When in Rome,” said Michael. “Which, in this instance, I interpret as this is a woman’s job.”

“You gutless bastard.”

Michael made no riposte, for the good and simple reason that he agreed with his wife. He was a gutless bastard, being firmly of the opinion that there were some issues a man had to be a damn fool to stick his nose into, this being one of them.

By the time that little exchange was over, Alyssa was more than halfway toward the two girls. Michael brought up the binoculars and tried to find the people observing the scene from the distant rise in the landscape. That took a few seconds, because all of them—he could spot four, two men and two women—were crouched down. They weren’t exactly hiding, but they were trying to make themselves inconspicuous.

One of the men seemed pretty old. He was wearing an oddly shaped piece of headwear—not so much a hat as something that looked like part of a costume. It was made of wood or bone and painted with facial features that were apparently meant to be frightening. His chest was covered with what looked like beadwork. The other man was clearly younger, but how much younger Michael couldn’t tell at this distance. Like the men who’d tried to sneak up on the truck two days earlier, he was bare-chested, but he wasn’t carrying a bow—although there might be one lying near him in the brush.

He then shifted the binoculars’ focus to the two women, which was easier to do because they were standing together and weren’t crouched down as much as the men. Again, there seemed to be a difference in age. One of the women looked no older than the two who’d come up the slope. The other looked a lot older, from what Michael could tell. She had graying hair, unlike the black hair of the younger woman. She was also not bare-chested, but was wearing some sort of sleeveless chemise. Unlike all the other clothing Michael had seen the natives wearing thus far, the chemise didn’t look like it was animal skin. It looked like some sort of woven fabric. In general, all the natives looked like Native Americans: brown skin, black hair, high cheekbones, and a bit barrel-chested.

By the time he’d finished his examination of the onlookers, Alyssa had reached the two girls. For a few seconds, all of them just stood there, staring at each other. Then Alyssa pointed to herself with a forefinger and spoke. Michael assumed she was saying her name. She repeated the gesture and the one-word speech and then pointed to the girl to the left.

The two girls looked at each other, and then the one Alyssa hadn’t been pointing at tapped her chest and spoke, following which she pointed to her companion and spoke again. To Michael, it looked like introductions had been made, though he couldn’t make out the words.

It was a start.

Alyssa now pointed to the Peterbilt and turned toward it, gesturing with her hand to indicate that the two girls should follow her. She walked a few steps and stopped. The girls hadn’t moved. Again, Alyssa gestured that they should come with her. The wave of her hand wasn’t peremptory; it was an invitation, not a command.

The girls looked at each other, then back at the people on the rise. Then turned back toward Alyssa, who was waiting patiently. The taller of the two girls—she was the one who’d responded to Alyssa’s introductions—took her companion’s hand and more or less tugged her in Alyssa’s direction. That was enough to get the three of them moving toward the truck.

* * *

Back on the rise, Achanu rose to his feet, ignoring the agitated hissing command to stay where he was that came from the old shaman, Priyak. One of the girls who’d been forced to attend the demon by the tribe’s shamans was his cousin, Oaka, which angered him. Like many of the young men of the clan, especially those like himself of chiefly lineage, Achanu was resentful of the growing influence of Hocha’s priesthood.

Their village of Jabir was not under the direct authority of the great city called Hocha. Like most outlying villages, their status was ambiguous. They did not send regular tribute, but were expected to supply workers for the mound-building projects of Hocha’s priests—which could sometimes prove to be a major burden.

Hocha had not called upon them to provide sacrifices. Not yet. But Achanu wondered how long that would be true. Sacrifices had been rare before the rise of the new priesthood—and as a rule, satisfied by the death of people who were old and sickly, and mostly volunteers. The sacrifice of girls and young women, which was the preference of the new priests, was abhorrent to many—Achanu and his uncles included. His mother also.

The shamans should have resisted the influence of the new priesthood, but all too often they sought to curry favor with them. There were some exceptions, but Priyak was more typical of the breed. They got away with it because the new priesthood of Hocha knew things that normal people couldn’t know. Things like when to plant the corn to get a good harvest. It proved that they had a special relationship with the gods.

The shaman now half-shouted a command for Achanu to crouch back down, but he ignored it also. He would normally have obeyed, since Priyak had been a clan shaman for many years and Achanu had just turned seventeen. He could not even claim warrior status yet, since he had neither been in a skirmish with another clan or tribe nor brought down a bear or bison on his own.

But enough was enough. More to the point, he was sure all three of his uncles would support him if Priyak brought charges before the women’s council—who were themselves, despite their usual conservatism, also growing displeased with the new priesthood.

For a moment, he considered leaving his spear behind, but decided against it. A spear of the sort he had in his hands was a short thrusting weapon with a crossbar, designed to kill or at least fend off bears and other large game. Bows and javelins were the weapons of a warrior planning to engage in combat.

Plus, unlike the enormous demon atop the slope, he was not wearing war paint. That alone should make his peaceful intentions clear.

He started down the rise, moving slowly because the footing was a little treacherous. The rocks were sometimes loose and much of the hillside was covered with brambles. They were in flower but not producing fruit yet.

Once he reached the bottom of the hill, he started up the slope toward the demon. He could see that his cousin Oaka and Jogida were looking down at him, along with the very dark-skinned woman who had come to meet them.

The most frightening thing Achanu had seen yet was that the dark woman had come out of the demon. He had seen her do it! One of the demon’s ears, which had been lying flat against its skull, had spread wide and she had emerged from it. The ear was so huge that she had had to climb down the demon’s cheek to reach the ground.

What sort of person could live inside a demon’s head?

He would not let his cousin face danger alone. A man should have been sent here in the first place to parlay with a monster, not two sixteen-year-old girls.

* * *

It was obvious to Alyssa that the two girls knew the young man coming up the slope. One of them—the taller one—had shouted out what she was pretty sure was a name, presumably that of the young man.

Young man? As he got closer, she could see that he did not look to be much older than the two girls at her side. All had black hair and dark brown eyes in light brown faces. They had high cheekbones. They all looked healthy and none had much in the way of lines around mouth or eyes. She’d thought the young man was older at first because of his self-possession. The man had been walking steadily but a bit slowly up the slope, as if not to alarm anyone. And he was holding the rather ferocious-looking spear—and using it—like a walking stick, not a weapon.

She heard the door of the Peterbilt’s cab open and looked back. Michael was now climbing out of the cab—and he was carrying his rifle.

Alyssa was nervous at first, but relaxed once Michael reached the ground. He came forward much like the youngster coming up the hill—a bit slowly, and holding the rifle in the carry position. The three natives would certainly not understand how a firearm worked, so the carry position would seem unthreatening.

The boy coming up the slope was now near enough that Alyssa could see the spear’s blade was some kind of stone, not metal. Flint or obsidian, given its dark color. Obsidian was always dark—black, usually—whereas flint came in a number of shades. But flint was common in the Midwest, while obsidian was not. You needed fairly recent volcanic activity to produce obsidian and that was found in the western parts of North America.

But there could be trade routes, she reminded herself. Even Paleolithic cultures often engaged in long-distance trade. Neolithic ones did it routinely.

When the youngster coming up the slope saw Michael, he stopped for a few seconds, and then came on more slowly than before. Alyssa had to suppress a nervous laugh. To a man of this day and age, Michael must look like a giant! The youngster staring up at him was no more than a few inches over five feet tall and probably didn’t weigh more than one hundred thirty or one hundred forty pounds. Michael was a foot taller than him and easily weighed twice as much. Some of that weight was early middle-age flab but most of it was bone and muscle—and the truck driver was very strong. Alyssa had seen the sort of weight he could move around.

* * *

And now an ogre had emerged from the demon’s head! For a moment, Achanu was strongly tempted to run back down the slope. But stubborn pride kept him in place long enough for him to realize that the creature wasn’t really a monster, just an incredibly large man. It helped that he had what seemed like a friendly smile on his face, and wasn’t holding his peculiarly shaped club in a threatening manner. The big man had yellow hair and skin as light as the woman’s was dark. And as he got closer, Achanu could see the eyes were the color of the sky.

So. Now what?

Achanu’s decision to ignore the plan worked out by the shamans and the village elders and come up here on his own had been impulsive, driven by festering anger and resentment. What was done was done, but now he had to figure out what to do next.

He turned to his cousin. “What did they tell you to do when you reached the demon?”

“Not much,” said Oaka. Her lips twisted into a wry, bitter smile. “I think they thought it was most likely that the demon would eat us.”

She was probably right. “They didn’t give you any instructions?”

Oaka shrugged. “If we remain alive, I am supposed to stay here while”—she nodded toward the other girl, Jogida—“she returns to the village and brings back her two younger brothers.”

That was still more of the priestly attitude. Use sacrifices of the weak. Jogida’s youngest brother was still a toddler. “And then what?”

She shrugged. “Spend the night up here, I guess. They didn’t tell us much.”

“That’s because they don’t know what to do, so they’re waving you and Jogida around—and now Faris and Ubadan too—like bait for a fish. Ubadan can’t even talk yet!”

Oaka looked up at the demon. “Very big fish. Maybe we’re too small to interest it.”

Achanu had always liked his cousin’s sense of humor. Oaka was a cross-cousin, too, not a parallel cousin, so marriage between them was not prohibited. He’d thought about it from time to time. Looking up at the demon, which brought a quite vivid image of his own mortality, he decided he’d better start thinking about it more often and more seriously.

“Here’s what we’ll do, then,” he said. He now turned to Jogida. “You may as well leave now.” He glanced at the strangers who lived in the demon. They both still seemed friendly and relaxed. “I don’t think they’ll object or try to stop you. Don’t come back today. Instead, take the time to gather food and blankets and whatever else your little brothers need. Come back tomorrow morning.”

“What do I say to Priyak if he objects?”

“Ignore that insect. Just ignore him. He’s too old and decrepit to do any harm to you.”

“What if the women’s council objects? Or the chiefs?”

They couldn’t just be ignored, unlike a shaman who’d brought disrepute on himself by his subservience to the priests of Hocha. “Talk to my uncle Hamadi as soon as you reach the village. Tell him I am working out another plan.”

His plan was really no better thought out than the one concocted by Priyak, but he saw no reason to point that out. His uncle Hamadi had confidence in him and he was influential among the chiefs. And his mother sat on the women’s council.

“Go,” he said. “Go now.”


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