“There! We’ve got what we came for here, too!” she cried.
“What did you do that for?”
The singing and dancing were over. There was little to do but drift aimlessly from one house to the next, and the rest had gone on ahead, leaving Lion and Flower Necklace alone.
“I wanted to show up Hummingbird Feather and that beast back there!” The girl tossed her head, letting her long, loose hair fly about her neck. “And besides,” she added, touching his arm, “I thought you’d be pleased.”
“I’ll be pleased when the sun rises and we can stop playing this silly game,” Lion said morosely. Hummingbird Feather had taken his torch around a corner and its light was just a slight lifting of the gloom at the end of the street. Lion was beginning to feel the night and its attendant terrors closing in on him. All Aztecs were superstitious, and brave warriors were usually among the worst.
She lowered her voice. “Well, there are other games we can play, if you like.”
The young man put his hand to his forehead. He took a deep breath. “Look, Flower Necklace...”
He never finished what he was going to say, however, as that was the moment when all his fears were realised.
If the attack had come along the street, Lion might have been able to meet it. He was used to seeing an enemy rushing at him, sword or spear upraised, mouth wide open in a scream of murderous rage. At the sound of pounding feet on the hard earth behind him, he might have done what he afterwards told himself he should have done: whirled around, seizing the only weapons he had to hand — the maize stalk and the porridge jar — and thrown himself between Flower Necklace and the threat, his own war cry bursting from his lips.
But neither his training nor his experience had prepared him to meet an assailant that dropped on him from the sky.
The first either Lion or Flower Necklace knew of the assault was an inhuman shriek that made them both leap up in fright. For a moment Lion stood, bewildered, head snapping back and forth as he tried to place the sound. It came again, from very close, and then Flower Necklace screamed in turn.
“Lion! Look up!”
Half the sky was hidden by the wall of the house they stood next to. Looming out over the other half, clearly discernible against the stars, was a shape that may have been human.
The scream came again: a quivering, inarticulate, piercing yell. It had not come from a man’s throat. Only a woman or a demon could have made a sound like that.
The jar fell and shattered. Lion saw the shape above him move, and then he lost his head. Forgetting Flower Necklace and his warrior’s dignity, he threw his maize stave aside and fled.
The torchlight had vanished by now, but he ran blindly towards the corner where he had last seen it. When he got there, he skidded to a halt so hard he scraped skin from his bare heel, and stared wildly into the darkness ahead of him. There was still no sign of the rest of the party, however.
“Hummingbird Feather! Wait!”
The cry came again. It was a little farther off now, but Lion had had more than he could take. He set off running again, and did not stop until his breath failed him and he crumpled in exhaustion.
It was not until the following afternoon that the shamefaced young warrior finally made his way home. His mother and father watched him in silence as he limped through the doorway into their courtyard. He said nothing, only wanting to crawl indoors onto his sleeping mat and forget everything that had happened in the night. However, he could not, because between him and the doorway stood Fire Serpent, the Master of Young Men. His arms were folded beneath the black-and-ochre mantle of a veteran warrior. As he eyed Lion’s torn, filthy clothes and drawn features, his expression was grim.
He spoke two words softly. “Flower Necklace.”
Lion’s jaw dropped. “Flower Necklace?” he repeated hoarsely. “What about her?”
“Where is she?”
Lion stared at him. He looked over his shoulder at his parents, but they might as well have been a couple of statues. Turning back to Fire Serpent, he stammered: “I thought she’d run away too. I–I’m sorry. It was the shock. I thought it was a demon, or a sorcerer — coming at me from up there, in the dark — look, I’m a warrior, not... Oh.” His eyes widened in horror. In a small voice he continued: “The demon got her?”
“What demon?” Fire Serpent demanded.
“Nobody’s said anything about a demon, Mountain Lion,” his father said.
“I should have stayed with her,” Lion whispered.
“You have no business staying with her, lad,” Fire Serpent retorted. “I’ve warned you before about trying to keep a pleasure girl to yourself. You’re lucky I got to hear about this in time to try to talk some sense into you. You know what will happen to you both if the authorities find out what you’ve been up to? The warriors will expel you and singe the warrior lock off your head, and she’ll be thrown out of the pleasure house with nothing but the clothes she stands up in.”
Lion’s mother added: “If you tell us where she is, son, then no harm’s done, but you have to let her go back to the pleasure house. Please!”
The young man looked from one to the other of them in confusion. “But I haven’t...”
Fire Serpent sighed. “I’m on your side, Lion. I was young once, after all! But this has to stop. I can cover for you until tonight, but if she’s not back at the pleasure house by then, I’m afraid you’re on your own!”
Hummingbird Feather woke up quickly, rolling off his sleeping mat and twisting his body so that Lion’s second kick caught his hip instead of the soft flesh of his side.
“Get up!”
He was on his hands and knees by now, ready to spring to his feet. “What’s going on? Lion? What are you doing?”
Lion lashed out again, but the other young man dodged and seized his ankle. Lion had anticipated the move, however. Throwing his whole weight onto his free foot, he lurched backwards, dragging Hummingbird Feather with him and leaving him sprawled facedown on the floor.
Lion leapt forward again, dropping onto the other young warrior’s shoulders and pinning him to the ground. The breath whooshed out of his victim.
“What did you do with her, you bastard?”
Hummingbird Feather groaned. “What are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about! Flower Necklace — where is she?”
“The last I saw of her, she was with you! Ow!” The last syllable was jerked from his lips as Lion grabbed a handful of his hair and yanked hard.
“Do you think I’m stupid? You wanted to get back at us for what happened at that first house, didn’t you? And then the stupid girl grabbed that cup from the woman and made you look even smaller. So who was on the roof? That girl you were with? Did you put her up to it?”
“Roof? What roof? Have you gone mad — Lion, stop! You’ll tear my scalp off!”
“And to think I was convinced I’d seen a sorcerer or a demon. You must have thought I was a simpleton!”
Hummingbird Feather talked fast. “You’ve got to believe me. We lost sight of you two just after we’d called at that second house. We’d all pretty much given up on the dance, so we just took the girls back to the pleasure house. Flower Necklace wasn’t with us — the women there all thought she must be with you, they assumed the two of you had hidden yourselves away somewhere private. Just go there and ask anybody if you don’t believe me! I don’t know anything about demons and sorcerers!”