I thought about hitting him and taking what Gilga-Yar was after. But this old man had me curious, and my patron’s lack of forthrightness with me made me want all the more to know what was going on. So I took the shovel and the knife. “What am I doing with these?”

—all around me, a great ring of warriors, clothed in armor of polished bronze and headgear of enameled tin feathers that rattled in the wind; warriors with curved breasts and also beards, their faces lighter brown in color than my own, their hands wrapped around pennons and spears. Between them prowled small lions, feather-maned and winged, that bared at me thin fangs of sharpened emerald.