Four shaggy, half-naked men seized a Maya and pinned him against the stone wall, their swords slashing again and again until the man hung like a tattered cloth. They turned, the blood fresh on their hands and their swords, swept across the court to where a group of Mayas were battering away at the barbarians who had surrounded them. They leaped over the heads of their fellow men, crashed into the Mayas, two meeting instant death on the tips of spears, the others flailing wildly with their swords.
Then, bursting into the court with a fresh band of heavily padded soldiers, was the captain with the scar on his face, the one Talu had called Baz.
His face was grim, and the scar stood out in vivid relief against the tautness of his cheeks. The light flickered over his face like the fires of hell on the face of a demon.
“Baz!” the cry went up from the Mayas. “Baz!”
Like a fury unleashed, he slashed across the court, his sword cutting a wide swath around him, barbarians falling like grains of wheat before the power of his thrashing arm. His soldiers stamped along behind him, caught in the fire of his charge, men fighting for their city and their home.
A terrible grin split Baz’s face in two, and his teeth gleamed, his eyes like two fiery coals embedded in his head. He shouted, his voice tearing through the night like the scream of a motherless coyote. He burst into a group of barbarians, lifting them, throwing them, slicing, cutting, gouging, kicking. The barbarians dispersed, regrouped and charged across the court again.
But this time the Mayas were strong behind the leadership of the screaming, bloodthirsty Baz. Like a tireless machine, they rolled across the court, the barbarians falling before their sharp swords and spears. The stones ran red, and their feet splashed in the blood and they forced the invaders back, back, killing, furious now in their first taste of victory, anxious to annihilate the foe, anxious to pound him into the very stones underfoot.
The back of the barbarian resistance was broken. Like a crippled snake, the foe slithered away from the city, pursued all the way by the ferocious Baz and his warriors.
The screams died on the night, and the smoldering torches faded and winked out, replaced by the cold, hard stars overhead.
The barbarian attack was over.
Neil slept fitfully that night, dreaming of the unkempt invaders and of the warrior Baz.
It was not until three weeks later, when Neil could converse with Talu in a halting, broken version of the Maya tongue, that he learned that those barbarian attacks were not infrequent.
“They come from the south,” Talu said, and Neil strained his ears and his mind to grasp the meaning of the Maya language. “They come often, and each time they come in stronger numbers. I fear they will completely overrun the city some day. And then what will become of us? What will happen to the Mayas?”
Neil’s knowledge of Maya had not come easy to him. The day after the barbarian attack, Talu had introduced Neil to a boy and a girl of approximately his own age.
Talu had pointed to the boy and said, “Rixal.”
Neil smiled and acknowledged the name.
The priest had then indicated the young girl and said, “Tela.”
Neil nodded profusely and repeated both names, “Rixal,” pointing to the muscular, brown-bodied boy, and “Tela,” his finger extended toward the shy, grinning girl.
The two of them had taken him under their wings then, two well-appointed teachers who led him around the city, pointing out buildings and courts, plazas and pillars. At first they chattered on and on in Maya, but Neil’s ears were deaf to the language.
After a week of constant exposure to the language, he began to pick up simple words and concepts. Words such as, “eat,” and “sleep,” and “boy,” and “girl,” and “temple,” and “palace.”
It was then that Neil learned the pyramid-shaped buildings were temples, and that the clustered rooms atop the low, fiat mounds were the palaces of the nobles and city officials. Rixal and Tela were brother and sister, and they lived in one of the palm-thatched huts on the outskirts of the city. Ordinarily they worked in the fields during the day, but they had been chosen to serve as guides for Neil and were thus excused from their normal duties.
Rixal was close to seventeen, and Tela was fifteen.
Neil learned their ages the hard way, during the second week of his education. By that time, his knowledge of Maya had increased enough for him to make his wants known in simple, direct phrases.
They had been eating, and Neil pointed toward a plum, indicating that he wanted one.
Rixal reached into the wooden bowl and scooped three plums into the palm of his hand.
“No,” Neil said in Maya. Then, not knowing the Maya word for one, he shook his head and held up one finger.
Rixal understood immediately and handed Neil one plum. And that had started them off on numbers and the Maya system of counting.