From the forest at the end of the valley came a sudden dull tremor, rolling closer from a distance. It was noon, the sky clear without a trace of cloud, yet it pressed overhead like muffled thunder. We had only just come up from underground, our nerves not yet fully unwound, and the sound tightened the body by instinct. Listening closer, it was not thunder at all, but something massive running through the trees, heavy feet striking the ground, a body crashing through trunks, the noise continuous and joined together, threaded with barking.
Only then did I realize that of the five dogs we had brought, only two yellow hounds remained lying at the valley floor, the three mastiffs nowhere in sight. Clearly, they had gone into the forest in pursuit. Erin listened for a moment, and her expression instead relaxed. "Driving boar," she said. "Those three won't come back empty."
We climbed halfway up the slope and soon saw red pines in the forest snapped one after another. The two yellow hounds at the valley bottom stood and spread out, but did not rush in recklessly; they knew what to wait for. The next moment, a massive wild boar burst from the forest, nearly the size of a small calf, bristles long and black, tusks curved like blades, hide thick and slick, charging straight into the valley. The three mastiffs appeared behind it, pace steady, neither hurried nor slow, maintaining pressure distance throughout. They did not lunge to bite directly, but drove the boar toward deeper layers of leaf mold.
The valley floor was thick with rot and leaves, and by the time the boar reached the middle stretch its hooves began to sink. The three mastiffs immediately formed a pincer, taking turns to wear it down. The two yellow hounds held the perimeter and did not join the frontal tearing. The boar roared and leapt to break free, and the largest mastiff had been waiting for that moment, almost synchronously launching into the air, the angle of impact precise, flipping the boar over. The other two filled in instantly and seized the belly. The outcome was decided within seconds.
We came down from the slope. Carter and I stepped forward to pat the mastiffs on the head, but they circled past us and went straight back to Erin. Erin took out dried meat and fed them, the three mastiffs gathered at her feet, the two yellow hounds following over as well.
I shook my head. "We were enthusiastic for nothing."
Carter snorted. "Dogs know their owner."
He went to the tent to get knives and the shotgun to help Erin dress the boar. I slung a shotgun over my back and took the two yellow hounds toward the mouth of the valley. The three mastiffs remained near camp on watch. At the pass facing the prairie, I chose a spot and began to dig. The entrenching tool had been left underground, so I had to use a pick and break the soil slowly. By the time the sun angled west I had only dug a little over a meter deep, sweat running down my face.
I took the child out from the military wool blanket and held her in my arms. Her body was cold and rigid, the chill perceptible even through the cloth, yet light in a way that unsettled me. I did not know what she had been like when alive, whether she had laughed, whether she had run in sunlight, whether someone had ever held her hand, but as she rested against me in that moment, I understood clearly that if she had still been alive, she should have been kept behind someone's back in protection, not buried in this stretch of mountain land.
I placed her into the pit, adjusted her position, wrapped the wool blanket tight again, and did not say much, only murmured a quiet rest. The first shovelful of soil fell with a light sound, the sun already leaning west, wind at the pass carrying a chill. I stood there and watched the earth level out, without surplus emotion in my mind, only a heavy quiet.
When I returned to camp, Carter was crouched by the fire turning the boar meat, he looked up at me and his gaze paused.
"Don't move," he said.
I frowned, not understanding what he meant. He walked over, gestured behind my back with his hand, then leaned closer to look, his tone suddenly turning odd. "That handprint. The one on your back."
I reached back by instinct and felt only the rough fabric of my clothing. Erin came over and looked as well, then said with certainty, "It's gone."
It was already getting late, Erin called to me from a distance to head back, I brought the hounds and returned to the slope where we had made camp, Carter hauled over a large rock and sealed the vent opening tight to keep whatever was down there from coming near us during the night, wild boar turning over the fire and a pot of offal, mushrooms, and wood ear simmering together, the scent of pine resin mixing with the smell of meat and hitting the face, I went straight for it and cut off a chunk with my knife and shoved it into my mouth.
After we ate, we drank the strong tea Erin brewed and discussed how to get back, without the pack horses carrying our gear it would not be easy to return to our original camp, we could not move the cookware or the tents, the hides we had collected along the way could not be carried out either, and that was no small loss. In the end Erin came up with a plan, send two of the dogs back with a message and have the people in town organize a string of horses to come out here, haul whatever could be moved out of the underground facility, leaving that much equipment and metal behind would be the real waste, and dogs are the best guides, they can lead the others back here, we would find a secure spot nearby and hold up until everyone arrived, then move everything out together.
At this point, that was the only option. Carter was not too concerned with the logistics, he took the gold mask out again and kept studying it. I said, "You really can't sit still, staring at it isn't going to make it grow another ounce of gold, stop carrying it around and let me hold onto it."
Carter lifted the mask in front of my face, a puzzled look on him. "James, is this still the one we pulled out of the tomb? Take a look, doesn't something seem off?" Since we got the mask out of the burial chamber I had not had a chance to examine it closely. Carter handed it to me again, a little agitated. "Why's the color changing?" I took the mask and studied it carefully.
It was a full human face, the forehead broad, the brow ridges raised, the nose distinctly hooked, the lower lip heavy and pushed forward, the mouth slightly open, the teeth reduced to a single incised line, the proportions exaggerated yet not unbalanced, carrying a formal, ceremonial presence. Small perforations ran along the edges, clearly meant for fastening with cord either to the head or across the face of the dead. Raised designs were pressed into the forehead and cheeks, shapes resembling wings interwoven with serpentine lines, or perhaps stylized clouds or flame forms, not necessarily a real animal but more likely a composite symbolic figure.
The entire mask had been hammered from thin sheet gold, the features pushed outward from the inside, the edges slightly rolled back, no signs of welding, consistent with cold-hammer work. There were no gemstones set into it and no complex assembly, the craftsmanship did not aim for luxury but for image and status. It was not decorative jewelry, it was more likely a marker of identity, something belonging to a priestly or ruling figure. The surface ornament was spare, the lines direct and economical, lacking fine relief detail yet preserving the compressed symbolic style common in Maya objects, geometric, abstracted, translating natural forms into signs. It was not realism but visual language expressing authority and order.
What was truly strange was the color. When we first took it from the tomb it had been a dark, muted gold, under the cold light of the underground facility it looked almost gray, and now under shifting firelight and sun it had deepened into a richer gold, closer to the sheen of high-purity metal. Maya gold often contains varying ratios of gold and silver, oxidation can alter its tone, yet for the color to shift several times in a single day was something we could not explain, maybe it was light and humidity, we were not specialists in metallurgy, perhaps we would need someone who knew antiquities to look at it.
The trip had not gone the way we expected, we thought a place like that would hold plenty worth trading, and the only thing of real value turned out to be this gold mask, and we had nearly lost our lives getting it out. If it ended up being beautiful but worthless, that would be harder to swallow than the danger itself.
Carter, however, was confident, he bet me the mask was worth at least a few tens of thousands of dollars, maybe it marked some ritual authority, in which case we should not rush to sell it, get it appraised first, have a museum or a university take a look before we let it go cheap, "quality assets don't get liquidated in a hurry, you wait for the market to price them right," he said, sounding like he actually knew what he was talking about. I cut him off. "Forget getting rich, let's get ourselves home first."
I had not slept in two days, after eating and talking a little I lay down and passed out, the hounds on watch so there was no need to worry about predators, I slept hard. In the dream I was back on the battlefield, the sky over the line filled with the faces of the men under my command, each face young, no bodies, only faces, bleeding, drifting upward into the sky, I tried to grab them from the ground, crying out, but my arms and legs would not move.
Nothing happened during the night, the bats from below were nowhere to be seen, perhaps frightened off by the gunfire and gone to find another cave to settle in.