There was already a crowd in there, with the man’s widow standing to one side, arms around her two young children. Her long hair was unbraided, streaked with ash, and raw, weeping furrows down each cheek showed where she had tried to mutilate herself with her nails. Her eyes stared blankly ahead, and she seemed to be in another world.
Mildred noticed it and whispered to Ryan that she thought the woman had been drugged.
The corpse rested on a low platform. It was naked, placed in a squatting position with cords around the legs, arms and upper body to keep it steady. There was a long wound down the belly, crudely stitched, and a strangely bitter, herbal smell filled the hut. The eyes had been removed from their sockets and replaced with the same white shells that decorated the masks.
“Like the Egyptians,” Doc observed. “They’ve opened him and taken out all the main organs. Used oils and stuff to embalm him. Stops him swelling and bursting and also cuts down on the maleficent odors.”
“His brain has also been removed,” Itzcoatl said. “It is in the sealed earthenware pot and will be buried with him.”
“How do they do that?” Krysty asked. “I can’t see any scars or marks on the skull.”
“Long hooked wires,” Doc replied.
“Fine, thanks. That’s all I need to know, Doc. Enough.”
“They insert them into the nostrils and draw the brain out that way,” the old man insisted, ignoring her protests. “Again, like the ancient Egyptians.”
“What’s happened to his dick, Dad?”
Dean’s voice broke into a sudden stillness in the hut, and everyone turned to stare at the boy.
“What?”
“Look at his dick. They tortured him or something?”
Ryan peered through the gloom, seeing that the dead warrior’s penis was visible between the bound legs, wincing as he saw what his son had spotted. The end was frayed and sliced into narrow strips or tassels, so that it resembled the petals of a flower.
“Fireblast.”
Itzcoatl now wore his ceremonial mask, and the white shell eyes turned incuriously toward the outlanders. “Sleeping Wolf did this himself.”
“Why?”
“To win favors of the gods. They love those who give pain to themselves in their honor. Many of us have done this. Or things like this. Also, the tattoos are for the gods.”
The priest coughed nervously, muttering something to the chief, who nodded in return.
“You ready to start?” J.B. asked.
Itzcoatl’s mask fluttered back and forth, but he didn’t speak.
The ceremony was relatively short. The gutted corpse was lowered into the square hole, where it rested, the head slumped forward on the muscular neck. Then his wife was given the pot containing his brain, but she nearly dropped it, seeming totally confused about what she was supposed to do. One of the priests took it from her and put it in the grave, between the dead man’s bare feet.
Other small earthenware containers were added.
Ryan turned to meet Mildred’s eyes, and he mouthed a question to her.
She read him correctly. “Food and drink. Corn for him to sow a crop when he reaches the other side of the dark river. Maybe some beads in case he needs trade goods.”
Last of all came a short-bladed dagger of the familiar black obsidian stone.
The priest in charge made a brief speech in their own tongue, scattering a handful of dirt into the dark hole, where it lay on top of the greased hair. Then the wife was given earth to drop in, but her fingers didn’t hold it properly and it spilled out onto the hut’s floor.
At a muttered word from Itzcoatl, a couple of older women took the widow and her children out of the hut. She walked between them, unprotesting.
“She has been given the yauhtli powder ,” the chief whispered.
“What?”
“A drug. It removes some pain. It is given as a mercy to those who we send to meet the gods.”
Mildred had been listening. “What used to be called Indian hemp, I think,” she said.
The ritual was coming to an end. One by one the men present were stooping to pluck up a handful of the loose dirt that had been excavated from the grave, letting it fall on the body. At a sign from the officiating priest, Ryan led his six companions to play their own small part in the burying.