We crouched with our shields up and backed into the crowd of Rattler bloods behind us. The blood who’d been hit broke from the group, turned around with his bloody wink, and saluted us-our salute was generally more of a casual “Hey, bro,” than a military deal-and ran wobblingly off to charge the Jaguars while he was still alive. While that was happening and before it was over a runner came through from Hun Xoc and led us farther back into a narrow pass. Koh’s entourage was already in the center. They set guards at each end so that if it looked like we might get cut off on one side we’d get ready to break on the other. I listened, trying to separate the code-calls from the screeches and the whirs of whistle-spears, but couldn’t get anything. It was still too dim to see detail. Someone was pushing through to us. It was Hun Xoc. He said the outrunners didn’t think Koh had been singled out yet, so neither had I. We should just dig in. In the meantime 1 Gila had taken a division south and was going to come back in from the east with noise like there were a whole lot more of us.

Well, the plan sounds-oh, wait. Who the hell is 1 Gila? Okay. The largest Teotihuacanian war clan that was solidly bonded to Koh and her Star Rattler Cult-and so were declared enemies of Severed Right Hand-were the Lineage of the Acaltetepon, that is, Heloderma horridum, the Mexican beaded lizard. 1 Gila wasn’t the patriarch of the clan-that was his much older uncle-but he was their war leader, and he was probably Lady Koh’s most powerful supporter.

Okay.

Well, the plan sounds great, I thought. Yup. You’ve got my blessing. I asked about our second-largest battle-ready group, 3 Talon’s contingent and the rest of his Mexican Eagle Clan. Or let’s be correcter and say “Caracara Clan.” Hun Xoc said they were fighting other feline clans themselves, but that as far as he could tell they’d already split off. Just before we needed them. The spies said they were going to consolidate in a fortified Caracara town about four jornadas west of the Valley. We didn’t know what they’d do after that. Probably they’d try to start another Teotihuacan-like city nearby with themselves in charge, although we knew from history that it wouldn’t be such a big deal. Anyway, they didn’t want to tell us much or make commitments, but since they were in shit with the cat clans they wanted peace, if not necessarily union, with the Rattlers. Nobody wants to fight on two fronts, except for crazies like late-period Hitler.

For a while things didn’t look good. 1 Gila’s people, who knew the area, could tell which different vendetta squads had taken advantage of the collapse of government in the region and come through ahead of us just from the number of headless bodies tied up in trees. The number of white buzzards overhead seemed to double every fifty-score beats and it started to really bug me, I couldn’t stop thinking about how hot and sour they must feel even way up in the air, all these fat suckers with their little heads like barbed penises, just slacking around in these high, agonizingly slow interlocking spirals, the most patient birds in the world. But by the end of the day-the day that was already being called the first Grandfather Heat of the fifth family of suns, “the Grandfathers of Heat to be born after the end of the earthly paradise”-it became clear that in this case bad for others was good for us. At noon we met the main body of Koh’s Rattler Newborn, or converts, which was listed at fourteen thousand but was obviously triple that if you counted women and children and thralls. About a third of Koh’s followers from the zocalo, that is, the plaza, had been killed by the Jaguars or by the fires, but the ones who had gotten away credited her with saving them. Most of them had picked up their extended families in the suburbs-who knew her prophecy already-and packed up whatever they had left to follow Koh to the Promised Land. Of course, they didn’t know she hadn’t yet decided where that would be.

And Koh’s k’ab’eyob — “rumorers,” rumor spreaders, or I guess we can call them advance men-had also done their job. More and bigger towns joined us every day, and more and more clan leaders pledged themselves and their dependents to Koh. Her runners ran up and down organizing them, adding the blue-green band to their colors, having them swear impromptu oaths, setting marching and foraging orders, whatever. She’d brought cases of cosmetics along-as always, first things first-and her dressers worked on everyone, from Koh on down, making us look more like a real royal entourage and not a messed-up gang of escapees.

By the old age of the first Grandfather Heat, the sun, as we headed into what would later be Puebla, our line stretched out so far that someone could go off-road and take a nap at the head of the first file, get woken up two- or three-hundred-score beats later as the last stragglers passed, and then, if they could afford bearers, have themselves run up to the front of the line again. Koh’s clowns ran up and down the sides of the line, under the direction of her favorite Porcupine Jester, and entertained the marchers with lampoons on the Pumas.

Finally, just as the same Grandfather Heat died, another round of messages went up and down the line between Koh, Hun Xoc, 1 Gila, 14 Wounded, and me. Without meeting in person we reached a consensus that we-“we” meaning us greathouse leaders and our core bloods-couldn’t afford to camp. We didn’t have enough guards to resist a full assault from the Pumas, so we’d have to stay on the move or they’d have time to set up an ambush somewhere. We had only fifteen suns left to get back to Ix before the big great-hipball game, barely enough for an ambassador with staged porters, let alone an army. So the Rattler Fathermothers and 14 Wounded’s posse and the Harpy bloods and me and the other hotshots kept going through the night, carried in stages by bearers who’d collapse exhausted at the end of their stint and sleep in the side-scrub until the trail sweepers in the rear guard prodded them. The heralds ran ahead to tell potential converts to wait for us so they could help carry the leaders. Mao had the Long March, but if this one got that kind of press it was going to be known as the Fast March. Or the Scatterbrained Dash, or something.

But, incongruously, it had a festive side. Since there was no question of secrecy, Koh had dancers with royal blue-flame myrtle-berry torches swirling in snake-coils ahead and behind her three palanquins, so that from a distance we must have looked like a long trail of glowworms with a single turquoise-tinted chemical mutant in the center. I thought it was silly of her to mark her position. But Koh was surrounding herself more and more with the trappings of divinity in other ways too. She asked for her pledged followers to get special perks and rationing, as opposed to other people we had in our train, and after some hemming and hawing even 14 Wounded said okay. Up and down the line and up and down the social scale she was the main subject of conversation, people repeating themes she’d started herself. She’d used old stories about One Ocelot’s daughter to make herself seem like the fulfillment of a prophecy, the same way that, much later, the nations that Cortez co-opted would spread rumors that he was “fulfilling” a prophecy that hadn’t existed before.

From what I could tell, she played the rest of the Star-Rattler Society pretty well too. Each of the high-ranked members of her order, including the nine-skull epicene adders, of which Koh was one of nine, advised and took care of a troop of dependents, generally lesser clans and villages that had converted, but also some individuals and smaller families. And Koh never made an overt statement against any of them. She cultivated her seniors in the Sorority-only three of whom were with us anyway-and played down her separatism. She had to get a coalition together but also position herself as a new dispensation, a kind of popular outreach. Forty days ago, before the Last Fourth Sun, the majority of the Rattlers’ children hadn’t specifically been Koh’s own followers, or even much aware of her. But now, after the Pumas had attacked all of the Rattlers indiscriminately, Koh made it look like she was in charge of the resistance, and thousands more had come over to our side. Or her side.