The journey back to their own camp was a frantic, silent retreat. The eerie, unnatural silence of the Nictex camp seemed to follow them, a tangible presence that clung to their backs. Etalcaxi led the way, his movements no longer the confident stride of a commander, but the twitchy scuttle of prey.
"Stay off the main path," he ordered in a harsh, raw whisper. "Keep to the trees. Watch your surroundings. Move."
His command was sharp, fueled by a new and unfamiliar fear, a cold dread that had seeped into him and refused to leave. Citli followed close behind, his youthful face pale, his eyes wide with a fear. Tlico brought up the rear, his usual, steady pace now a grim, hurried shuffle, his hand never leaving the hilt of his knife. Xochi moved with them, her usual stoicism now a brittle, high-strung alertness.
They arrived back at their camp to find the other porters waiting anxiously. The sight of Xochi's pale face and the grim expressions of their returning leaders told the whole story. A wave of panic rippled through the small group. Ixa let out a small, choked gasp, while Coyotl immediately began to pray, his words a low mumble.
Etalcaxi, Tlico, and Citli stood apart from the others, their faces grim in the light of the late afternoon.
"No bodies," Citli said, his voice trembling as he replayed the scene in his mind. "No blood. No signs of a real battle. Where did an entire caravan go, Commander? It makes no sense."
Tlico shook his head, his own face ashen. He had lived his life by the predictable cruelties of men and the indifferent cruelties of nature. This was something else. "The jungle took them," he said, his voice a low, fearful growl. "That is the only explanation. The stories are true. This jungle... it is a cursed place. It consumes those who trespass."
"No," Etalcaxi said sharply, his mind rejecting the simple, supernatural explanation. Fear was a fog, but tactical thinking was a sharp blade that could cut through it. He began to pace at the edge of the camp, a caged animal, his mind a whirlwind of facts, observations, and terrifying memories. "The jungle is just jungle. A place does not act. Something did this. Something with a plan. This was an attack, not a curse."
He paced, back and forth, the images flashing through his head, each one a piece of a puzzle he was beginning to dread solving.
First, the evidence at the camp. The deep, strange gouges in the earth, like the marks of giant, clawed roots that had erupted and retreated. Not the tracks of any beast he knew. Then, a memory surfaced, a soft, mysterious voice in a moonlit grotto.
"...my family has very, very deep roots."
Ixtic's words, which had seemed like beautiful poetry at the time, now echoed in his mind with a chilling, literal undertone.
An enemy that leaves no tracks, his tactical mind reasoned. An enemy that takes everything—bodies, weapons, animals. Not a beast. A beast would leave blood. A beast would leave bones, gnawed and scattered. This was efficient. This was clean. This was carried out by... people. A tribe.
But that made no sense either. He saw the Nictex camp again in his mind's eye, the valuable trade goods—jade beads, fine woven blankets, copper bells—scattered about, completely untouched.
If a tribe attacked, why not take the treasure? he thought, his pacing becoming more frantic. Why take only the men?
Then another memory, sharper and more recent, pierced through the fog. Ixtic's face, her serene, beautiful smile as he had explained the concept of a rival caravan, of an obstacle.
Ixtic's tribe, the thought landed, cold and hard. The reclusive tribe no one has ever seen. The guardians of the wood who command the trees themselves. They do not need jade or copper. They do not like rivals... they do not like people who take what is not theirs.
He stopped pacing, a cold sweat breaking out on his skin. The final piece of the puzzle, the key that unlocked the entire horrifying picture, was their last conversation. He replayed it with a chilling clarity, her every word, every nuance, now twisted into a monstrous new shape.
Her face, her eyes calm and cold as a winter frost, her voice a gentle, musical whisper that had soothed his worries. "Do not worry about the rivals, my warrior. The jungle... protects its own."
She knew, he realized, his blood running cold. She knew the Nictexs were there. I told her. I called them an obstacle. And she promised to deal with the obstacle. This... he looked around at the silent, watching trees, ...this is how she dealt with it.
His warrior's mind, faced with an act of such total, bloodless annihilation, searched desperately for a motive. Why take the bodies? Why leave the treasure? His experience was with human warfare, with the brutal, logical ways of battle and survival. And in those ways, there was only one tactical reason he could conjure from the dark legends and fireside stories of savage, remote peoples who lived beyond the edge of the known world.
Sustenance, the thought whispered, a serpent in his mind. They were not taken as captives. They were not slain in battle. They were taken for... food.
The thought made him stumble back a step, a wave of nausea rolling through his stomach. He saw the half-burnt logs at the Nictex campfire, and a new, terrible image filled his mind: the Nictex warriors, Lord Cozoc himself, being butchered and cooked over a fire by a tribe of silent, smiling, green-eyed cannibals.
And with that horrifying leap of logic, every beautiful, sensual memory of his time with Ixtic was instantly, horribly re-framed, twisted.
The memory of their first kiss in the cenote. Her mouth had been hungry, her taste wild and strange. Her hunger now seemed terrifyingly literal. Had she been tasting him? Judging his flavor?
The memory of her inhuman strength, the easy way she had guided his body through the water, the powerful grip of her hands. Her strength was now not just sensual; it was the power of a predator, the strength needed to subdue and carry away a struggling man.
The memory of her smile, the way she had watched him with those amused eyes as he had lain beside her, sated and content. Her smile was now the patient, appraising look of a monster sizing up its next meal.
The seduction, he thought, a cold, abject horror seizing him. The passion. The healing. The nights together... It was all a lie. A test. Not of my heart, but of my flesh. She was not choosing a lover. She was... fattening a pig for the slaughter. The mark on his throat, the tattoo of their union, suddenly burned with a cold fire. It was not a lover's mark. It was the mark of ownership, the mark of a butcher claiming his chosen animal.
He stopped pacing. His face was white with a terror so profound it felt like a mask of ice. Tlico and Citli stared at him, alarmed by the wild, haunted look in his eyes.
"Etalcaxi?" Tlico asked, his voice low and cautious. "What is it? What have you concluded?"
He looked at his two companions, his eyes wide with a fresh, personal horror that went beyond the fate of the Nictexs. It was the horror of a man who realizes he has been sleeping with the monster, that he has welcomed it into his body and his soul.
"The local guide," he said, his voice strained, cracking with the effort of forming the words. "The woman... Ixtic." He looked at Tlico. "Her 'tribe'. You were right. The jungle is hungry." He took a shuddering, ragged breath. "And she is its mouth."
He looked from Tlico's stunned face to Citli's confused one. "The Nictexs were not just driven away," he choked out, the words tasting like poison. "They were harvested."
Citli's face crumpled in disbelief and a dawning, sickening horror. Tlico's face, already ashen, went slack, his worst, most vague fears given a monstrous, beautiful form.
Etalcaxi had laid out conclusion that made perfect, terrifying, tactical sense to him. The beautiful woman who had healed his wounds, who had shared his body and his secrets, was a cannibal. And he, her most recent and intimate conquest, the one she had tasted and marked as her own, was undoubtedly next on the menu.