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Curran knew that if they could reach the pass behind them, they could lose their pursuers in the mazelike passage across the mountains or take shelter in the many caves lining the passage walls. Either one would more than likely grant them the time and safety they needed to regroup and restore their wounded. If they could hold off until dark, they might then be able to sneak across the valley without the Naimans being the wiser.
Curran’s group was tired—they’d been traveling for days already—while the enemy appeared to be fresh. It was obvious to Curran that the enemy had the advantage. That didn’t seem to matter to these hardy warriors, though. They would either succeed or die trying, apparently; and for the first time since he had come to live among them, the priest felt a sense of admiration for their tenacity and sheer courage in the face of overwhelming odds.
Their horses thundered on through the snow while the enemy closed inexorably from behind.
After a time, it was obvious to everyone, even Curran, that they were not going to make it. Volke shouted again and the small entourage turned to fight.
Curran watched their pursuers come on with fear in his heart but with courage on his face.
As the enemy closed the distance, they split ranks, sending half of their forces sweeping to the left while the remainder went right, enveloping Curran’s small group in a wide circle two ranks deep, with each rank moving in opposite directions. From out of those ranks the arrows came again. Curran watched Volke topple from the saddle with more than a dozen black shafts jutting from his now-still form. Kaisar and Jelme, his senior lieutenants, met the same fate seconds later. In moments, the enemy had effectively stripped the small band of its most experienced leaders. Curran had no doubt that the tactic had been intentional. Cutting off the head to kill the body was a strategy as old as war itself.
If someone didn’t do something soon, they were all going to die, the priest realized. Apparently the men around him felt the same way, for there was a sudden shout from one of the more experienced warriors and the troops spurred their horses and charged the enemy. Trained to act with the others, Curran’s horse followed suit. The Jesuit was about to meet the enemy whether he wanted to or not.
“Lord, protect your humble servant,” the priest whispered under his breath as he drew his sword and went to meet his death with his head held high in the manner of the Savior he revered.
The two groups slammed together with thunderous force. Men shouted, horses screamed, and Curran found himself slashing to and fro with his weapon, striking out at anything within reach, fighting for his life just as savagely as the enemy sought to relieve him of it.
For just a moment, he thought they might win. Their sudden concentrated attack had surprised the enemy and they burst through the first rank without stopping, surging forward, but in the next moment a heavily mailed fist holding the pommel of a sword smashed into Curran’s face, toppling him from his saddle. He struck the ground hard, and as he lay there unmoving, the wind knocked out of him, he felt a stabbing pain in his left leg. Curran screamed in agony. Darkness loomed and then swept over him like the tide.
H AVING FULLY EXPECTED to die when he’d lost his grip on his horse, Curran was surprised to regain consciousness sometime later. With consciousness, however, came an awareness of the pain his body was experiencing and surprise quickly turned to regret. In that first instant, he was convinced that death would have been a better alternative to what he was currently experiencing. He screamed aloud against the pain and passed out again.
The second time he regained consciousness, the cold had wrapped him in its chilly embrace, dulling the pain to a minor roar, and he was actually able to open his eyes.
He immediately wished he hadn’t.
The dead were everywhere. They covered the ground in front of him and as far as he could see on either side. After stripping the bodies of anything of value, the Naimans had followed the traditional steppes custom and left the dead where they had fallen. Now their eyes stared unseeing and their blood stained the snow in thick patches of crimson-black. The bodies of his companions mingled haphazardly with the corpses of the horses on which they’d ridden, neither man nor beast being spared in the midst of the fray.
He shifted his position and a lance of roaring pain shot up from his left leg and threatened to plunge him into unconsciousness once more. He fought against it, knowing that if he succumbed, he’d most likely freeze to death.
When the dizziness receded and he could think clearly again, he looked down at his leg. He turned away almost immediately. The sight of the dark shaft of an arrow jutting up from his thigh and his own blood staining the snow was almost too much for him to bear.
He couldn’t ignore it, though. He was going to have to deal with it, and soon, if only to keep from bleeding to death. Steeling himself, and taking a deep breath to keep from vomiting, he looked down at his leg again.
The arrow had hit him high on the back of the thigh and had gone all the way through his leg at an angle, exiting about an inch above the knee. He could see that the edges of the head were barbed, which meant he wasn’t going to be able to pull the arrow back in the direction it had entered. Nor could he remove it the other way; the feathered shaft would prevent it.
He was going to have to break the shaft on one side or the other and then pull the rest of it free.
The very thought of it made him shudder.
Why bother? he wondered. Even if he could get the shaft out and stop the bleeding, he was only trading one method of dying for another. There was no way he could travel in his condition, and if nightfall caught him here on the plain he was sure to freeze to death. It seemed God had saved him from a quick, sure death only to fall victim to a long, lingering one.
But Curran was not the type to go down without a fight.
The wind was picking up and the snowfall that had dogged their march earlier that morning had started anew. Never mind the brutal cold that threatened to steal his every breath. If he didn’t do something immediately, he wasn’t going to have the strength left to try anything at all.
He tore several strips of cloth off the shirt of a nearby corpse, folding some a few times to create makeshift compresses and laying the others out where he could reach them without difficulty. Working quickly so that he wouldn’t have time to think about it, he rolled partially on his side, exposing the feathered end of the arrow. Taking it in his left hand, he gripped his thigh tightly with his right, holding it steady. Curran took a deep breath and then snapped his left hand sharply to one side, breaking the wooden arrow in two just above the fletching.
He screamed against the pain, but managed to remain conscious. The motion had started the wound bleeding again. With shaking hands, he stuffed several of the compresses against the open wound and then tied it off with one of the strips.
He was breathing heavily now, the pain making it difficult to concentrate, but he pushed through it, knowing he had no choice but to finish what he had started.
Gingerly placing his leg flat on the ground, he took hold of the tip of the arrow, wrapping his fingers around the barbed edges to give him more leverage. He gritted his teeth and pulled.
With more than a bit of resistance, the rest of the shaft slid free.
He tossed the broken shaft of the arrow aside, packed the wound with some snow and the rest of the compresses to stop the bleeding, then tied the whole thing off just as he had the entry point.
When he was finished, he slumped on the ground, sweating, exhausted and in considerable pain.
After some time—he didn’t know how long—the pain receded to a manageable level. He pushed himself back up into a sitting position and took a look at his handiwork.
Blood had dried around the edges of the makeshift bandages, but it looked like as if the wound had stopped bleeding.
Maybe he was going to make it, after all.
A soft snort to his immediate right made him nearly jump out of his skin. He slowly turned his head, not wanting to jostle his injured leg but at the same time afraid of what he might see. To his vast surprise, he found the horse he’d been riding standing a few feet away, rooting through a partially opened saddlebag for something to eat.
“Thank you, Lord,” Curran whispered.
If he could get on the horse, he had a fighting chance at survival.
Like the other Mongol steeds, his was a short-legged, shaggy beast that had seen its fair share of death and was unmoved by the carnage around it. Losing interest in the saddlebag at its feet, it raised its head, catching sight of Curran in the process. It trotted over and nuzzled him, looking to be fed.
“Good boy,” the priest whispered, petting its nose with one hand while grabbing onto the straps of the saddlebags it still wore with the other.
Using the straps for support, he hauled himself upright, using the strength of his arms and his one good leg. It took several tries, but at last he was standing on one leg, his arms wrapped around the horse’s neck to keep from falling.
He rested in that position for a moment, praying the horse wouldn’t make any sudden moves and dump him back down on the snow. When he’d caught his breath again, he reached for the pack still hanging around the horse’s hindquarters, right where he’d loaded it earlier that morning.
Working slowly and carefully to limit jarring his injured leg any more than necessary, he untied the drawstrings of the pack and withdrew the ceremonial robe he’d worn when appearing for his audience with the khan in Karakorum. The material was quite thick, something he constantly complained about when wearing it, but now he was silently thankful. He slipped the material over his shivering form and slumped against his horse, already exhausted and he hadn’t even tried getting himself up into the saddle.
A sudden sound to his left drew his attention.
He straightened up, trying to see.
Only the dead stared back at him.
The sound came again, a low moan, but this time he saw the fingers of a nearby form twitch in conjunction with it.
Another survivor!
“Hey! Hey, you! Can you hear me?” Curran called out in the Mongolian he’d picked up during his two months in Karakorum.
The strange croaking sound that came out of his parched throat surprised him. Until that moment, he hadn’t even been aware of his tremendous thirst. He coughed, then used a handful of snow to wet down his lips and throat before trying again.
“Are you okay? Can you walk?”
There was no response.
He knew he hadn’t imagined it. That meant the man was either too injured to respond or simply couldn’t understand him.
Curran had no choice; he was going to have to go over to the injured man and take a look. He considered climbing astride the horse, but decided the effort required to get up and then back down again was probably too much for him. Instead, he got the horse moving slowly in the direction he wanted it, using the animal as a makeshift crutch for support as he hopped along on his good leg. When Curran was close enough, he pulled the horse to a stop and dropped down in the snow next to the wounded man.
He rolled the body over and discovered that it was the man who had saved him earlier, Tamarak.
The feathered shafts of two black arrows jutted from deep in the man’s stomach and a sword blade had taken a bite out of the left side of his head. Given the barbed tips, Curran had no way of removing them. He’d been able to remove his own only because the arrowhead had come all the way through his flesh. These were embedded deep in the muscle. Pulling them out was likely to cause more damage than leaving them in. The best he could do was to make Tamarak as comfortable as possible and to stay with him until the end.
An end that could come faster than either of them wanted if they didn’t find some shelter and protection from the cold.
He dragged the other man closer to the horse, where, to his surprise, the animal got down on its knees, allowing Curran to haul both himself and Tamarak’s unconscious form onto the horse’s back.
The beast climbed to its feet, and for the first time since the Naiman war party had been sighted, Curran felt optimistic about his chances for survival.
As if in answer, the wind swirled around him and the falling snow began to thicken. The storm was here to stay, apparently.
Curran took a moment to get his bearings and then turned the beast about to face the direction in which they had been fleeing. There were caves back in the pass itself and it was Curran’s intention to hole up inside one for shelter from the storm.
He’d worry about how to get back to Karakorum in the morning.
First, they had to survive the night.
S EVERAL HOURS LATER Curran sat in a cave that was deep enough to filter out the winds howling outside. There had been a few sticks lying just inside the entrance. He combined them with some of the extra clothing from his pack, and made a small fire to keep them warm. It was still cold, though not as bad as it would have been had they been trapped outside. It would serve to keep them from freezing to death.
At least until the fuel ran out, he thought, and then just as quickly pushed the image away. The Lord will provide, he told himself. The Lord will provide.
At least we won’t starve to death, Curran thought, with a glance at the corpse of his horse where it lay just within the entrance tunnel. The poor beast had collapsed after carrying so much weight through the freezing cold weather without rest. Curran hadn’t yet managed to get up the nerve to start carving up the carcass. He didn’t mind eating horseflesh. He’d been forced to do so during other missionary journeys he’d been on and it hadn’t been all that bad. It was just that this particular horse had been instrumental in saving his life and it felt disrespectful to treat its remains in such a fashion.
Still, when the time came, Curran had little doubt that his reticence would quickly vanish. Starving to death wasn’t on his list of endings to this saga.
The dead horse was proof of what they had endured to reach this point. The trail had been difficult to find without the Mongols to guide him. The ever-increasing fury of the storm had cut their already-slow pace to a crawl, as did the times that Curran lost his grip and toppled off his patient mount. Thankfully, the horse had traveled this way before, and when he finally stopped trying to control it and just gave it its head, it took him where he wanted to go.
With the help of the firelight, Curran had cleaned Tamarak’s head wound and had broken off the jutting ends of the arrows to keep the wounded man from accidentally driving them deeper into his body.
After that, there wasn’t anything to do but wait.
The snow had continued to fall and the entrance to the cave was half-covered from the heavy accumulation. Curran didn’t mind, as it served to keep the heat from the fire trapped in the cave, warming him and his unconscious companion, while still allowing the smoke to escape.
Unable to sleep, Curran took out his worn leather journal and began to write, recording the events of the past several days in as much detail as possible to ensure that there was some record of what had happened to him should he not make it back to Karakorum. He’d been doing the same thing since his mission had started many months before, and what had once been an annoying chore had turned into a soothing balm for his spirit.
At the very least, it gave him something to think about other than the pain in his injured leg, he thought ruefully.
It wasn’t long before Tamarak, delirious with fever and pain, began raving aloud. At first Curran ignored it, knowing there was little he could do for the man, but then something Tamarak said caught his attention and he listened more carefully.
What he heard amazed him.
If it was true, he was being given the secret of the ages!
I really need a miracle now, Lord, he prayed, as he turned to a clean page of his journal and began writing frantically, trying to get it all down just in case the good Father decided to deliver on his request.
2
Mexico
Annja Creed was knee-deep in sacrificial victims when the shooting started.
At first, there was only a single gunshot, which was easy enough for her to ignore. After all, the sound of isolated gunfire was relatively common at a dig site this deep in the jungle. Someone fired off a weapon at least once a week. The reasons for doing so varied, but they usually had something to do with the local wildlife. Just last week, Martinez had found a twelve-foot python in his bed and had fired off four shots before he managed to hit the thing. A few days before that, the cook—a guy by the name of Evans—had used his shotgun to drive off the howler monkeys he’d caught raiding the food larder. The monkeys still managed to get away with the chocolate bars he’d been hording.
But when the first couple of shots were followed by an entire volley of gunfire from several different weapons, Annja knew something was seriously wrong.
For the past three weeks, Annja and the rest of the dig team working on behalf of the Bureau of Cultural Studies had been carefully excavating the ruins discovered at Teluamachee, about a hundred and fifty miles outside of Mexico City. A recent earthquake had cut a swath through the jungle, knocking down trees and natural earth formations with equal abandon, exposing a set of long forgotten ruins hidden in a narrow valley deep in the jungle. A scout for a local logging company had discovered the site and, thankfully, had enough respect and admiration of his heritage to report the location to the bureau rather than selling that information on the black market. The bureau wasted no time in assembling a team of experts—including Annja—asking them to come down and take a look at what they had found.
Annja had been in between assignments when the call had come in and she’d wasted no time in agreeing to join the team.
The main dig site consisted of a large three-story temple complex in the standard step pyramid formation, with several smaller buildings lining the east and west sides of the courtyard extending south from the base of the pyramid itself.
A few hundred yards to the west of the main structures was the site’s cenote, a deep, water-filled sinkhole that the Mayans considered a link to the rain gods, or Chaacs. Sacrificial victims and precious objects had been tossed into the sacred well as offerings during the site’s heyday as a way of protecting the populace and bringing good fortune. To the dig team’s delight, the earthquake that had uncovered the primary dig site had also drained the cenote, exposing its secrets to the light of the sun for the first time in centuries.
Annja was down in “the hole,” as they had come to call it, erecting a grid made of nylon rope and stakes across the entire area. This would allow them to record the precise depth and location of every object they removed from the muck-covered bed at the bottom of the sinkhole. That information would then be fed into a 3-D simulation program that would provide them with a computer model to work with in analyzing the artifacts.
It was important work, which was one of the reasons Annja had volunteered to do it, despite the ankle-deep puddles and stinking muck that covered the bottom of the cenote. From where she stood she could see the skeletal remains of at least five different individuals and more than a handful of ceremonial objects, such as knives, bowls and statuettes. The items they recovered from the cenote would probably tell them more about daily life at the site than the ruins themselves. It was like a window into the past, one she looked forward to peering through.
But right now she needed to forget about the past and focus on the present.
She looked up toward the rim of the cenote, expecting to see Arturo, her partner for the afternoon, peering over the edge and frantically signaling for her to come up, but there was no sign of him.
Had he run off? Gone for help? She didn’t know. Thankfully, the rope she’d used to climb down into the hole was still where they had left it, hanging against the interior wall of the cenote. It was tied off at the top around a nearby tree trunk and so Arturo’s help wasn’t required for her to get back to the surface. It would have been helpful, but not necessary.
She slogged over to the far wall, being careful not to step on any of the remains scattered about her feet, and took hold of the rope. Planting one foot against the interior wall of the cenote, she began to pull herself up hand over hand, walking her feet upward as she went.
She hadn’t gone more than a few steps up the wall when a shadow blotted out the light from the setting sun above. Startled, Annja looked up. She was just in time to see Arturo hurtling down toward her, his arms and legs flailing wildly, his mouth open in a silent scream.
Annja let go of the rope, dropped the few feet to the bottom of the cenote, and flattened herself against the wall, trying to make herself as small as possible.
Arturo’s body missed her by mere inches and then hit the bottom with a loud, mud-filled splash. His sightless eyes stared back at her, accusing. So, too, did the bullet hole in the center of his forehead that was leaking a thin stream of blood into the muddy water where he lay.
She could hear voices above, shouting in Spanish. She couldn’t make out everything that was said, but the word cenote came through loud and clear a few times and she knew they were headed her way, either to see if Arturo had been alone or to be certain he was dead.
If they looked in and caught her here…
Annja didn’t need to finish the thought to know she was in deep trouble. She had only seconds to find a place to hide. Any moment now someone was going to stick their head over the edge and see her.
Her chances of surviving for even a few minutes after that were slim to none.
Without hesitation she took a deep breath and threw herself down into the water at her feet, burrowing into the mud and muck beneath and throwing it over her body, trying to cover herself up as much as possible. There wasn’t anywhere else she could hide. The dark fatigue pants and top she was wearing would help, she knew, as would the deep shadows accumulating with the close of day near the walls of the cenote itself. If she could just stay out of sight for a few moments, she might be all right.
For the time being, at least.
She kept one ear turned to the side, listening, and just as she suspected, she heard two voices talking together somewhere above her. An argument ensued for a moment, the voices rising and falling rapidly, and then they fell silent.
