And He Subdues the Peoples
“How can they do this?” wailed Tepin’s brother’s wife. Her brother’s widow, now.
“The ones with staffs are kneeling. The warrior priest and effigies.”
Except these priests didn’t look particularly devout. Easily, casually, as if they’d done so a thousand times before, the praying men shook black kernels into the fluted opening at the top of their staffs, followed by black sand. Then some business with a long black rod and a bit of gray cloth.
“The priests propitiate their effigy. The knights with swords…kill those who are left alive.”
“We’ll die,” whispered Yolotil as the the foreigners fanned out over the street. “They’ll kill us. We’ll die.”
“Maybe not.” Yolotil licked her lips.
“Maybe? We can’t run. We can’t fight back, and it didn’t look like the foreigners cared to butterfly-prisoners. So what can we do?”
“Give them what they want.” Tepin watched a pale-skinned man in flowing robes bend over a corpse in the square and straightened with a jade bracelet shining in his hand. He gave this trophy to second man who doodled something on a block of wood and in turn passed it to a smiling, bowing swordsman. The next piece of loot, a gold pendant, went to a warrior priest with his smoking effigy.
“Gold and jade,” said Tepin. “”They don’t seem to care about feathers. They’re taking it back to their leader who’s redistributing it? And now,” the cold, damp hand of the underworld gripped her neck. “Now the knights are turning to the houses.”
Tepin thought of the sight that would greet the enemies when they entered her sister-in-law’s house. The jewels, the ornaments, the fine cloth and carvings. These were not signs of affluence and good taste. They were poison. An invitation to horror like a bloody carcass in shark infested water.
She rose from her crouch and grabbed Yolotil. “Quickly, go downstairs to the altars and the wardrobe. Gather up everything valuable and dump it on the street. Pile up the sacrifices, and the monsters sent by the God of Death may turn aside and not destroy us.”
Yolotil shook Tepin’s hands away. “You can’t think you’ll be able to buy those men off.”
“If we can’t,” said Tepin, at lest we will have made a worthy sacrifice for our own funerals.
The poem paraphrased in the title
