Plague Lords (Empire of Xibalba, #1) Read online

  “I can’t watch this,” Mildred said, turning her head away, looking out at the Gulf, as she continued to row in time to the drumbeat.

  Ryan wouldn’t permit himself to look away from the spectacle. He was hoping to find some kind of strategy that would work for J.B., some plan, some trick he could yell out to him.

  There was a lot of punching and kicking between the mixed sex fighters. At one point the man had the upper hand after straight punching his opponent in the face and buckling her knees. But he couldn’t close the deal.

  The woman, who outweighed him by forty pounds, shot a snapkick to his solar plexus that made her heavy breasts fly almost up to her chin. The heart kick dropped the guy like a sack of rocks, an event that drew cheers from the audience.

  The woman did a better job with the machete.

  Five strokes instead of forty.

  As the pirates dumped the man’s corpse over the side, Mildred turned back to Ryan and said, “They’re killing each other so they can take a few more breaths of air, so their hearts can beat another thousand times. Look at them. They’re all goners.”

  Based on that assessment, J.B. was a goner, too, but Ryan chose not to point it out. Even if J.B. survived the coming fight, afterward he was going to have to pick up an oar and row, something that his broken ribs would make very difficult. If he couldn’t row, he was going to be flogged. A lot. Which would make it even harder to row. There wasn’t much wiggle room in the situation.

  Two grizzled old men were pushed into the makeshift ring next. Both looked to be on their last legs. They were starved to skeletons. Their skin was peeling off in big white patches, revealing bright pink flesh beneath. Neither one had the eye of the tiger. After some slow circling and a few soft overhand blows, one of the men clutched the center of his chest and dropped to the deck.

  “For nuke’s sake, look!” Ryan told the doctor.

  “Coronary,” Mildred said, diagnosing from afar.

  The white-haired victor didn’t have the strength to swing the machete. He tried several times, but he could only deal out superficial, shallow cuts. At each blow the loser, who was still conscious, let out a shriek of pain.

  Finally, a burly pirate seized back the machete. With a single, downward chop he split open the stricken man’s skull from crown to the bridge of his nose. He then put his boot on the man’s neck and levered the blade back and forth to free it.

  The lucky winner barely made it to the port rail without falling himself.

  There were boos and catcalls from the pirates. They didn’t like the performance. The chilling hadn’t been done by the winner. There were disputes over whether bets should be paid off or not.

  From the pilothouse deck overlooking the stern came a brusque command.

  “What did he say?” Ryan asked Mildred.

  “I’m not absolutely sure,” she said, “but I think the dreadmaster just changed the rules of the contest.”

  “Did he give a reason?”

  “The winner’s too weak to be of use.”

  In short order the victor received the same treatment as the loser, a machete blade to the skull from behind. Then both of the bodies were pitched overboard. They bobbed together in the tug’s wake.

  So far, Ryan hadn’t picked up anything J.B. could use. Each contest had been defined by the physical limits of the opponents.

  The fourth match was only slightly more exciting than the third. The two men were decades younger, with deeper natural reserves of strength and more powerful wills to survive. They had, however, been galley slaves for a while, long enough to be used up and thrown away. They both managed to draw blood from punches to their mouths and noses before their arms hung down limp and useless by their sides.

  When the spectators got restless, the Matachìn commander spiced things up by ordering a machete be slid across the deck between them.

  The blade stopped at their feet. Both men dropped down on their hands and knees and began struggling for control of the weapon.

  This set the pirates to hooting again.

  Somehow, in the subsequent pulling back and forth, and the rolling around on the deck, one man ended up flat on his back and the other on top, straddling him. They each had hold of the big knife’s handle. The man on top was trying to bring the long edge across the front of his opponent’s throat. The man on the bottom was trying to drive the gut hook into his counterpart’s neck.

  It was another stalemate, but not for long.

  Gradually, using the deadweight of his body more than main strength, the man on top wore down the other guy’s strength. The blade came closer and closer, and then it bit into his unprotected throat. The man on top pressed down harder, making blood well up around the edge of the blade. Then, with a savage flourish, Top Man whipped the machete crosswise, cutting the man’s neck wide open. Blood gushed out onto the deck. The vanquished let out a howl of defeat, his heels drumming. In a few seconds, it was over.

  The loser went over the side.

  Bets were paid off.

  It was J.B.’s turn next.

  “You’ve got to watch this,” Ryan told Mildred. “We might be his only chance. We might be able to help him.”

  “Help him!” Mildred exclaimed. “He can’t punch. He can’t breathe deeply, so he won’t have any stamina, and the other guy is eight inches taller. Ryan, I’ll watch, but all we can do for him is pray.”

  The last pair of fighters was shoved together on the stern. J.B. looked extra-small compared to the guy he was pitted against.

  “He’s left his glasses and hat on,” Mildred said. “Maybe he knows something we don’t.”

  Ryan didn’t respond. It had also occurred to him that J.B. wanted to die wearing his hat and glasses.

  The other guy had much longer arms. J.B. kept moving, circling around and around, avoiding the lunges, looking for a way under the man’s guard.

  J.B. feinted left, when the man reached out, he booted him in the right kneecap. The impact of bootsole on cartilage made a crunching sound. From the expression on the man’s face, it had to have hurt, too. It slowed the guy down, big time.

  Sensing he’d lost something important, the next time J.B.’s opponent lunged, he really extended himself. He managed to catch the Armorer by the collar, not the neck as he’d probably intended. Before J.B. could twist out of his grasp, the bigger man body-punched him, laying several quick, hard blows one on top of the other.

  For a second all the blood drained out of J.B.’s face.

  “Oh, no,” Mildred moaned. “No…” J.B. brought the edge of his boot heel down on the tips of the man’s bare toes, which wrung a piercing scream from his mouth. The guy let go and J.B. moved to the right, favoring his injured side.

  Then Ryan noticed something about the way the other guy moved. His back was rigid, stiff, like it was locked in place. He didn’t twist his torso as he lunged for J.B. He lunged straight ahead. His only plan of attack was to get hold of his adversary and not let go.

  A bad back was an occupational hazard for a galley slave. It meant early retirement and a spot in the kill-or-be-killed show.

  If the guy couldn’t turn at the waist, he couldn’t defend himself from a side attack. And if he couldn’t do that, he was in deep shit.

  “J.B.!” Ryan called. “Flank!”

  The Armorer didn’t look over to acknowledge that he had heard and understood, he didn’t take his eyes off his opponent, but he immediately reversed course, then reversed again.

  Ryan smiled for the first time in what seemed like hours.

  “Why are you grinning?” Mildred said. “What is there to grin at?”

  “J.B.’s checking the guy’s range of motion,” he told Mildred. “Seeing which side is the least flexible.”

  “And how is that—” J.B. showed her how. He faked the big guy into moving toward his stronger side, then before his opponent could pivot back, J.B. stepped forward and heel-kicked him behind the same kneecap he’d kicked before.

  Wit
h a loud crack, the leg gave way under him, and the man crashed to his back on the deck. He clutched his busted knee and wailed.

  Holding his ribs with the insides of his forearms, J.B. didn’t waste the advantage. He laid into the guy with a series of snapkicks to the ribs and the side of his head.

  J.B. didn’t kick in the guy’s head with his steel-toed boots, maybe because he didn’t want to, maybe because he was winded and didn’t have the strength.

  As he moved back, his opponent rolled onto his stomach, then pushed up on his hands and knees. His head hung down. Blood dripped in a steady stream from his face, splattering on the deck in front of him.

  It was game over.

  But there was one more thing that had to be done.

  One more awful thing.

  The Matachìn were clamoring for it.

  One of the pirates handed J.B. a machete. He accepted the weapon, but the expression that passed over his face was disgust.

  If he didn’t chop the chop, Ryan knew the chances were good he’d get chopped himself, like the geezer who couldn’t make the chill.

  J.B. stepped within striking range of his opponent’s exposed neck. The man looked up at him with horror and desperation. He didn’t want to die like a chicken. He wanted to die like a man.

  J.B. gave him a little nod, an almost imperceptible nod toward the stern rail. Ryan caught it, but no one else did. The Armorer raised the machete skyward, then paused as if to summon his strength. The hesitation was on purpose. It gave the doomed man the chance to scramble to his feet and dive headfirst over the side.

  The pirates rushed to the stern, hauling out and shouldering their submachine guns, looking for a head to shoot at.

  The commander called for the rowers to stop rowing, but the loser never surfaced. Not so much as a trail of bubbles. And the commander didn’t order the tug turned around to look for him. They were miles offshore.

  Dead was dead, after all.

  Evidently, the climax satisfied the Matachìn. Bets were paid off without complaint. J.B. had clearly won the contest. A pirate snatched the machete from him, then escorted him at blasterpoint to the awning.

  J.B. was chained to the same oar as Mildred and Ryan, on the inside empty seat.

  “Nice fight,” Ryan said. “Never a doubt, huh?”

  “That guy messed me up,” J.B. said tightly. He was obviously in considerable pain. “I’m not going to be much good pulling on an oar for a while.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Mildred said.

  “We’ll pick up the slack for you,” Ryan said. “You can just coast until you feel better.”

  From up on the pilothouse deck there was a flurry of back-and-forth Spanish. The commander was talking to someone inside the bridge.

  “Did you get any of that?” Ryan asked Mildred.

  “We’re headed south,” she said. “To Veracruz.”

  “Down in Mex?” Ryan said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “How far is it?” J.B. asked.

  “You don’t really want to know,” she assured him.

  “Yeah, I do. How far?”

  “One hell of a long way to row,” Mildred said.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Harmonica Tom sat some seventy-five feet above the deck of Tempest. He was perched in a bosun’s chair he’d hauled up near the top of the main mast. For some, the high, suspended seat under full sail and on choppy seas would have been petrifying, but he was more than used to it. He enjoyed the expanded view and the exaggerated roll of the ship that the vantage point offered.

  Though his binocs he was watching the Matachìn fleet at an extreme distance, paralleling their course to keep them in sight. Two of the sailboats were limping along; they hadn’t fared so well in the contest of skippers. The third was on the bottom of the Gulf by now.

  A smile lifted his handlebar mustache.

  He could see the light reflect off the tugs’ oar blades. They all flashed at once as the paddles turned and dipped in rhythm. Some of the folks chained to those oars were islanders. It was a safe bet all of them were Deathlanders. He had no way of telling whether Ryan Cawdor or any of his crew were captives. He hoped they weren’t dead, but he wouldn’t wish the fate of a galley slave on them, either.

  Could’ve been him pulling on one of those oars, he knew, but for dumb luck and a hard, following wind.

  Looking through the binocs he had to wonder if he had been saved for some greater purpose, him and all that C-4.

  If he could have, he would’ve attacked the pirate ships then and there, run amok among them with his machine gun and explosives. If he could have, he would’ve chilled all the Matachìn, freed the slaves and scuttled their evil boats.

  A man alone, even a man with a shitload of C-4, a man who was no stranger to excessive violence, had to be cautious when the odds were way-long against him. He had to think hard on his strategy, and pick his time and place to strike.

  The skipper of Tempest, swaying high over its deck, flying under full sail, addressed the row of little boats bouncing in and out of his binocs’ field of view. “You bastards don’t know it, yet,” he said, “but Harmonica Tom is about to go legendary on your asses.”

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-2562-0

  PLAGUE LORDS

  Copyright © 2008 by Worldwide Library.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Worldwide Library, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ® and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.