Everyone else rose, with varying degrees of ease and difficulty, Jak at one end of the scale and, not surprisingly, Doc at the other.
“You are content with the huts?” The chief looked worried at the thought that the visitors might not be happy with their accommodation.
“Good,” Jak replied, receiving a relieved beam of delight from Itzcoatl.
The firelight was playing across the chest tattoo of the entwined snakes, making them come alive, writhing. Ryan yawned, aware of how filled the day had been. He was ready for bed.
There was a distant crackle of thunder, snatching the attention of all the gods. “Rain is needed,” Speaking Eagle said. “Comes from smiles of gods. Buy smiles with blood of enemies. We need many enemies for blood for smiles.”
“Guess you would,” J.B. agreed.
Ryan nodded. “Then we’ll say good-night and go off to the huts you’ve let us have.”
He led the way through the crowd, which folded away from him as though the natives feared that his skin might contaminate them in some way.
Itzcoatl called after him.
“We will send women for you and the men.”
Chapter Twelve
“What?” Krysty’s response would have shattered a plate-glass window at fifty paces.
“It is our way.”
J.B. winked at Ryan. “Sounds like a good way to me. What do the rest of you reckon?”
“Dean’s too young,” Ryan said straight-faced. “Much too young.”
“And Doc’s likely too old,” the Armorer added. “Be wasted on him.”
“Oh, no it would not, John Barrymore Dix! There may be snow upon the roof, but there is a positive inferno still capable of blazing in the hearth.”
“How about me?” Jak said. “I’m the god, so I get first picking.”
“I don’t believe this.” Mildred stamped her foot. “How can you guys possibly?” Then she caught the smirk that passed between Ryan and J.B. “Oh, I get it. You bastards!”
The chief had watched the byplay, looking puzzled, trying to work out what it was that the Anglos were saying. He finally sensed that some kind of a joke or a trick was being played, and he started to laugh.
“You men say you want our women, but your women say not,” he spluttered. “But you not want them.” The broad smile vanished as quickly as it had been born. “Why it is that you not want our women?”
“No reason. Just that where we come from”
“The dark land of death?”
“No.” Ryan hesitated. “Well, yeah. Back there we pick our own women.”
DEAN FELL ASLEEP QUICKLY on the grass-filled mattress in the far corner of the kitchen. He’d dragged it there without anything being said. Though there wasn’t even a curtain between the two parts of the house, he gave Krysty and his father a semblance of privacy and modesty.
They lay together, Ryan having done no more than take off his heavy combat boots. He had suggested to the rest of the friends that they take care sleeping, not post a watch, but not get undressed, in case something roused them fast in the middle of the night. And they were to keep their blasters close to hand.
He reached out and put his arm around Krysty, feeling for the warm swell of her breast. But she eased away from him. “Told you, lover. Wrong time of month.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Likely.”
“Be nice.”
He could almost feel her grinning in the smoky darkness. “Sure it would. If you want it real bad, lover, then I’d be happy to slide down and give you”
“No. Not tonight. Too one-sided. Like it to be two-sided.”
She sat up and patted him on the cheek. “Hey, not bad. Not bad for you, lover.”
Outside, the village was falling into sleep.
Itzcoatl had told them that the warriors always kept a watch, though they didn’t expect the slavers to run at them again for at least another month. That had become the pattern of their savage raids. But there was always the threat from the Jaguar people, out there in the blackness of the forest.
The dogs of the settlement had quieted, and the only sound was a baby crying in a nearby hut, a noise that quickly faded away into stillness.