Naamah's Blessing

and if his plan had succeeded, there was no chance we would have survived. The Cloud People would have crept into our camp and bludgeoned us to death in our sleep. Pochotl had slit poor Clemente DuBois’ throat with his own hand, and fiveother men were dead because of his treachery. He had disobeyed the Nahautl Emperor’s direct order.
    By the implacable looks on Eyahue and Temilotzin’s faces, I could see that there was no sparing him.
    “Yes,” I said to the latter. “You may.”
    The Jaguar Knight hoisted his obsidian-studded club. “You may wish to stand back,” he warned us. “This will be messy.”
    The rest of us retreated a few paces.
    Pochotl stood unmoving, his expression stoic. Temilotzin swung his
macahuitl
club in one hard, level blow at the fellow’s neck. The edges of the obsidian flakes lining his club may have been brittle, but they were razor-sharp. His strike sheared Pochotl’s head clean away from his body. The head bounced and rolled on the plain, while blood jetted in a crimson geyser from the stump of his neck. The headless body remained upright for the space of a few heartbeats before crumpling to the ground.
    Denis de Toluard turned away and vomited.
    I would have liked to do the same, but I fought against the surge of nausea, swallowing bile and struggling to keep my face expressionless. Temilotzin gave me an approving look, then clapped Denis on the shoulder. “Your stomach will grow stronger in time,” he assured him, then stooped to pick up Pochotl’s head by its long black hair. “Do you want him buried with the others, old man?” he asked Eyahue.
    The old
pochteca
regarded his nephew’s disembodied head with disgust. “No,” he said. “Leave him to the scavengers.”
    We did.

FORTY-FIVE

    I n the wake of our first battle, once the worst of the aftermath had been dealt with, I found I had a rebellion on my hands.
    Alain Guillard, the hotheaded Azzallese baron’s son who had bunked in one of the wardroom’s cabins aboard
Naamah’s Dove
with us, was arguing that we should turn back; and he’d convinced at least three others.
    “This was madness from the beginning!” he railed. “What in Elua’s name were we thinking, any of us?”
    “
I
was thinking I abandoned some of my dearest friends and the Dauphin of Terre d’Ange to their fate!” Denis de Toluard retorted with unexpected force. “And that I’d been given a chance to redeem myself!”
    “That’s your burden, Denis,” Alain said in a remorseless tone. “
I
didn’t.”
    “Be glad I carry it!” Denis shouted at him. “It gives me nightmares until I can’t sleep at night!” He jerked his chin at the waiting common grave dug into the earth and the line of D’Angeline dead nearby, stripped of their armor. “If it didn’t, we’d all be like them!”
    “And so we all will sooner or later!” Alain shouted back at him. He gestured savagely in my direction. “She doesn’t know where she’s going, Denis! None of us do!” With an effort, he wrestled himself under control. “We’ve been on the road for months, and we’re not even in sight of these fabled jungles. Now we’re supposed to rely onpeople like to slaughter us in our sleep to assure us we’re on the right track?” He shook his head. “We’re only days away from the borders of the Nahuatl Empire. If we turn back now, we stand a chance of surviving this.”
    His allies murmured in agreement, and others looked uncertain.
    “Don’t let him get the upper hand, my lady,” Septimus Rousse murmured in my ear. “If you do, he’ll never relinquish it.”
    Bao nodded. “He’s right, Moirin.”
    I took a deep breath. “My lord Guillard speaks the truth! I
don’t
know where we’re bound. The task is harder, and the journey longer, than I knew.”
    “That is not what I had in mind,” Bao muttered.
    I ignored him. “But I
do
know that Thierry de la Courcel lives, and I know it is my oath-sworn duty to attempt to rescue him.” The spark of my
diadh-anam
blazed steadily in my breast, lending me strength. I pointed at Alain Guillard. “You volunteered for this, my lord. All of you did. You begged for the chance to accompany us. Will you turn back now, just because it is
hard
?”
    A few men chuckled.
    Alain glared at me. “Do you think it is easy for one of Azza’s scions to admit he made a mistake?”
    “No,” I said softly. “I don’t.” I glanced at the D’Angeline dead lined up beside the open grave, at Clemente