Naamah's Blessing

here,” he informed us. “Tipalo says many months ago. They traded two horses for help building canoes. One of the horses died. He would like more.”
    At last, I let myself feel relief. “Does he have any idea what happened to them?”
    “No,” Eyahue said. “They paddled down the river and never came back. That is all he knows.”
    “It’s more than we knew yesterday,” Bao said pragmatically. “We know they reached the river, and we’re still on their trail.”
    Whether it was due to innate hospitality or eagerness at the prospect of gaining two more horses, the folk of Tipalo’s village gave us a generous welcome. The village was located some distance into the jungle, before it began to thicken to the point of impassability, near a river that Eyahue said was a tributary of the big river.
    It was a rustic place with a circle of wooden huts sporting roofs of thatched palms built on hard-packed earth, but the folk seemed relaxed and agreeable. Dozens of near-naked children regarded our sweltering men in their steel armor warily, but they swarmed Temilotzin, giggling and scattering when he roared and waved his arms and stamped his feet in mock-threat. Remembering the casual ease with which our Jaguar Knight had beheaded Pochotl, I could not help but marvel at the contrast and think that human beings were complex and contradictory creatures.
    “Aside from the insects, this isn’t as bad as I imagined,” Balthasar remarked, swatting at a swarm of mosquitoes.
    “No,” Denis said. “But I daresay there’s worse to come.”
    “I’m sure there is, my doom-saying friend,” Balthasar said mildly. “So let me enjoy myself while I can, won’t you?”
    Over the course of our journey, Eyahue had endeavored to teach us a bit of Quechua, the native tongue of the folk of Tawantinsuyo.I’d hoped that when it came time to barter, I’d be able to understand a bit, but we had not yet reached the boundaries of the empire, and these folk spoke a dialect of their own.
    So it fell to our crafty old
pochteca
to barter for us; and in all fairness to him, it appeared he struck a decent bargain.
    “Tomorrow, we will go to the big river,” Eyahue announced. “Tipalo and the others will help us fell
marupa
trees and build canoes.” He cast a critical eye over our company. “At least nine will be needed. It is a great many trees. For this and additional supplies, we will give them your horses. If we survive and return to reclaim these horses…” He shrugged. “Well, then we will strike a new bargain.”
    “Do you not expect to survive this journey?” I asked him.
    Eyahue sucked his remaining teeth in a meditative fashion, rocking back on his heels and reaching out to sling one wiry arm around the waist of a giggling village woman who may or may not have been part of the bargain he’d struck on our behalf. “I have survived it before,” he admitted. “Many times. But I am old now.”
    “Not
that
old,” Balthasar observed.
    “Old enough.” He squeezed the woman’s buttocks, eliciting further laughter. “But young enough, too!”
    On the following day, we hiked deeper into the jungle and got our first look at the big river. At a glance, it didn’t look as intimidating as I’d feared. It was a wide swath of slow-moving milky-green water that led deeper and deeper into the depths of the jungle. But Eyahue had proved himself right time and time again, and when he assured us that the placid river would develop deadly rapids in the leagues ahead of us, I did not doubt him.
    The
marupa
trees grew tremendously tall, with very straight trunks ideally suited for making long dugout canoes. The villagers indicated two that would be acceptable and set out scouring for others while our party began the task of felling and hollowing the first two trees, sharpening hatchets and adzes dulled in the digging of a mass grave after the attack of the Cloud People.
    Even with so many willing hands and the aid of the villagers, itwas a considerable job, and we were at it for days. The men worked in shifts, taking turns with our limited number of tools.
    My offers to help were rebuffed, so I spent the time in the village getting to know its inhabitants as best I could without a shared tongue, relying on the knack of nonverbal communication I’d developed during the long winter I’d spent among the Tatars.
    The women were hard at work knotting sturdy hammocks out of sisal fiber, part of the supplies for which Eyahue had