Aztec

by Gary Jennings

  I said to the glum warrior, meaning it for condolence, “You are not the only captive, my beloved son. It appears that your whole army has been defeated.” He only grunted. “Now I will take you to have your wounds tended. I think I can carry you.”

  “Yes, I weigh less now,” he said sardonically.

  I bent down with my back to him and took his shortened legs under my arms. He looped his arms around my neck, and his blazoned shield covered my chest as if it had been my own. Cozcatl had already brought my mantle and spear; now he collected my wicker shield and my bloodstained maquáhuitl. Tucking those things under his arms, he picked up an amputated foot in either hand and followed me as I moved off through the rain. I trudged toward the murmurous noise to the south, where the fighting had finally wound down, and where I supposed our army would be disentangling the resultant confusion. Halfway there, I met the members of my own company, as Blood Glutton was collecting them from their various overnight stations to march them back to the main body of the army.

  “Fogbound!” shouted the cuachic. “How dared you desert your post? Where have you—?” Then his roaring stopped, but his mouth stayed open, and his eyes opened almost as wide. “May I be damned to Míctlan! Look what my most treasured student has brought! I must inform the commander Xococ!” And he dashed away.

  My fellow soldiers regarded me and my trophy with awe and envy. One of them said, “I will help you carry him, Fogbound.”

  “No!” I gasped, the only breath I could spare. No one else would claim a share of the credit for my exploit.

  And so I—bearing the sullen Jaguar Knight, trailed by the jubilant Cozcatl, escorted by Xococ and Blood Glutton proudly striding on either side of me—finally came to the main body of both armies, at the place where the battle had ended. A tall pole bore the flag of surrender which the Texcaltéca had raised: a square of wide gold mesh, like a gilded piece of fishnet.

  The scene was not of celebration or even tranquil enjoyment of victory. Most of those warriors of both sides who had not been wounded, or were only trivially wounded, lay about in postures of extreme exhaustion. Others, both Acólhua and Texcaltéca, were not lying still but writhing and contorting, as they variously screamed or moaned a ragged chorus of “Yya, yyaha, yya ayya ouiya,” while the physicians moved among them with their medicines and ointments, and the priests with their mumbles. A few ablebodied men were assisting the doctors, while others went about collecting scattered weapons, dead bodies, and detached parts of bodies: hands, arms, legs, even heads. It would have been difficult for a stranger to tell which of the men in that wasteland of carnage were the victors and which the vanquished. Over all hung the commingled smell of blood, sweat, body dirt, urine, and feces.

  Weaving as I walked, I peered about, looking for someone in authority to whom I might deliver my captive. But the word had got there before me. I was suddenly confronted by the chief of all the chiefs, Nezahualpíli himself. He was garbed as a Uey-Tlatoáni should be—in an immense feather-fan headdress and a long multicolored feather cloak—but under that he wore the feathered and quilted armor of an Eagle Knight, and it was spattered with blood spots. He had not just stood aloof in command, but had joined in the fighting himself. Xococ and Blood Glutton respectfully dropped several steps behind me as Nezahualpíli greeted me with a raised hand.

  I eased my captive down to the ground, made a tired gesture of presentation, and said, with the last of my breath, “My lord, this—this is my—well-beloved son.”

  “And this,” the knight said with irony, nodding up at me, “this is my revered father. Mixpantzínco, Lord Speaker.”

  “Well done, young Mixtli,” said the commander. “Ximopanólti, Jaguar Knight Tlaui-Colotl.”

  “I greet you, old enemy,” said my prisoner to my lord. “This is the first time we have met outside the frenzy of battle.”

  “And the last time, it appears,” said the Uey-Tlatoáni, kneeling down companionably beside him. “A pity. I shall miss you. Those were some wondrous duels we had, you and I. Indeed, I looked forward to the one that would not be inconclusively ended by the intervention of our underlings.” He sighed. “It is sometimes as saddening to lose a worthy foe as to lose a good friend.”

  I listened to that exchange in some amazement. It had not earlier occurred to me to notice the device worked in feathers on my prisoner’s shield: Tlaui-Colotl. The name, Armed Scorpion, meant nothing to me, but obviously it was famous in the world of professional soldiers. Tlaui-Colotl was one of those knights of whom I have spoken: a man whose renown was such that it devolved upon the man who finally bested him.

  Armed Scorpion said to Nezahualpíli: “I slew four of your knights, old enemy, to fight free of your cursed ambush. Two Eagles, a Jaguar, and an Arrow. But if I had known what my tonáli had in store”—he threw me a look of amused disdain—“I would have let one of them take me.”

  “You will fight other knights before you die,” the Revered Speaker told him, consolingly. “I will see to that. Now let us ease your injuries.” He turned and shouted to a doctor working on a man nearby.

  “Only a moment, my lord,” said the doctor. He was bent over an Acólhuatl warrior whose nose had been sliced off, but fortunately recovered, though somewhat mashed and muddy from having been much trodden upon. The surgeon was sewing it back onto the hole in the soldier’s face, using a maguey thorn for a needle and one of his own long hairs for a thread. The replacement looked more hideous than the hole. Then the doctor hastily slathered the nose with a paste of salted honey, and came scurrying to my prisoner.

  “Undo those thongs on his legs,” he said to a soldier assistant, and to another, “Scoop out from the fire yonder a basin of the hottest coals.” Armed Scorpion’s stumps began slowly to bleed again, then to spurt, and they were gushing by the time the assistant came bearing a wide, shallow bowl of white-hot embers, over which small flames flickered.

  “My lord physician,” Cozcatl said helpfully, “here are his feet.”

  The doctor grunted in exasperation. “Take them away. Feet cannot be stuck back on like blobs of noses.” To the wounded man he said, “One at a time or both at once?”

  “As you will,” Armed Scorpion said indifferently. He had never once cried out or whimpered with pain, and he did not then, as the doctor took one of his stumps in each hand and plunged both their raw ends into the dish of glowing coals. Cozcatl turned and fled the sight. The blood sizzled and made a pink cloud of stinking steam. The flesh crackled and made a blue smoke that was less offensive. Armed Scorpion regarded the process as calmly as did the physician, who lifted the now charred and blackened leg ends out of the coals. The searing had sealed off the slashed vessels, and no more blood flowed. The doctor liberally applied to the stumps a healing salve: beeswax mixed with the yolks of birds’ eggs, the juice of alder bark and of the barbasco root. Then he stood up and reported, “The man is in no danger of dying, my lord, but it will be some days before he recovers from the weakness of having lost so much blood.”

  Nezahualpíli said, “Let there be a noble’s litter prepared for him. The eminent Armed Scorpion will lead the column of captives.” Then he turned to Xococ, regarded him coldly, and said:

  “We Acólhua lost many men today, and more will die of their injuries before we see home again. The enemy lost about the same, but the surviving prisoners are almost as many as our surviving warriors. To the number of thousands. Your Revered Speaker Ahuítzotl should be pleased at the work we have done for him and his god. If he and Chimalpopóca of Tlácopan had sent genuine armies of full strength, we might well have gone on to vanquish the entire land of Texcála.” He shrugged. “Ah, well. How many captives did your Mexíca take?”

  Knight Xococ shuffled his feet, coughed, pointed to Armed Scorpion, and mumbled, “My lord, you are looking at the only one. Perhaps the Tecpanéca took a few stragglers, I do not know yet. But of the Mexíca”—he motioned at me—“only this yaoquízqui …”

  “No longer a yaoquízqui, as
you well know,” Nezahualpíli said tartly. “His first capture makes him an iyac in rank. And this single captive—you heard him say he slew four Acólhua knights today. Let me tell you: Armed Scorpion has never troubled to count his victims of lesser rank than knight. But he has probably accounted for hundreds of Acólhua, Mexíca, and Tecpanéca in his time.”

  Blood Glutton was sufficiently impressed to murmur, “Fogbound is a hero in truth.”

  “No,” I said. “It was not really my sword stroke, but a stroke of fortune, and I could not have done it without Cozcatl, and—”

  “But it happened,” Nezahualpíli said, silencing me. To Xococ he continued, “Your Revered Speaker may wish to reward the young man with something higher than iyac rank. In this engagement he alone has upheld the Mexíca reputation for valor and initiative. I suggest that you present him in person to Ahuítzotl, along with a letter which I myself will write.”

  “As you command, my lord,” said Xococ, almost literally kissing the earth. “We are very proud of our Fogbound.”

  “Then call him by some other name! Now, enough of this loitering about. Get your troops in order, Xococ. I appoint you and them the Swallowers and Swaddlers. Move!”

  Xococ took that like a slap in the face, which it was, but he and Blood Glutton obediently went off at a trot. As I have told earlier, the Swaddlers were those who either tied or took charge of the prisoners so that none escaped. The Swallowers went about the whole area of battle and beyond, seeking out and knifing to death those of the wounded who were beyond relief. When that was done, they heaped and burned the bodies, allies and enemies together, each with a chip of jadestone in its mouth or hand.

  For a few moments, Nezahualpíli and I were alone together. He said, “You have done here today a deed to be proud of—and to be ashamed of. You rendered harmless the one man most to be feared among all our opponents on this field. And you brought a noble knight to an ignoble end. Even when Armed Scorpion reaches the afterworld of heroes, his eternal bliss will have an eternally bitter taste, because all his comrades there will know that he was ludicrously brought down by a callow, shortsighted, common recruit.”

  “My lord,” I said, “I only did what I thought was right.”

  “As you have done before,” he said, and sighed. “Leaving for others the bitter aftertaste. I do not chide you, Mixtli. It was long ago foretold that your tonáli was to know the truth about the things of this world, and to make the truth known. I would ask only one thing.”

  I bowed my head and said, “My lord does not ask anything of a commoner. He commands and is obeyed.”

  “What I ask cannot be commanded. I entreat you, Mixtli, from now henceforward, to be prudent, even gingerly in your handling of the right and the truth. Such things can cut as cruelly as any obsidian blade. And, like the blade, they can also cut the man who wields them.”

  He turned abruptly away from me, called to a swift-messenger, and told him, “Put on a green mantle and braid your hair in the manner signifying good news. Take a clean new shield and maquáhuitl. Run to Tenochtítlan and, on your way to the palace, run brandishing the shield and sword through as many streets as you can, so the people may rejoice and strew flowers in your path. Let Ahuítzotl know that he has the victory and the prisoners he wanted.”

  The last few words Nezahualpíli did not speak to the messenger, but to himself: “That the life and the death and the very name of Jadestone Doll are now to be forgotten.”

  Nezahualpíli and his army parted from the rest of us there, to march back the way we all had come. The Mexíca and Tecpanéca contingents, plus myself and the long column of prisoners, went directly west on a shorter route to Tenochtítlan: across the pass between the peak of Tlaloctépetl and that of Ixtaccíuatl, thence along the southern shore of Lake Texcóco. It was a slow march, since so many of the wounded had to hobble or, like Armed Scorpion, be carried. But it was not a difficult journey. For one thing, the rain had finally stopped; we enjoyed sunny days and temperate nights. For another, once we had crossed the fairly rugged mountain pass, the march was along the level salt flats bordering the lake, with the serene, whispering waters on our right and the slopes of thick, whispering forests on our left.

  That surprises you, reverend friars? To hear me speak of forests so near this city? Ah, yes, as short a time ago as that, this whole Valley of Mexico was abundantly green with trees: the old-old cypresses, numerous kinds of oak, short- and long-leaved pines, sweet bay, acacias, laurel, mimosa. I know nothing of your country of Spain, my lords, or of your province of Castile, but they must be sere and desolate lands. I see your foresters denude one of our green hills for timbers and firewood. They strip it of all its verdure and trees that have grown for sheaves of years. Then they step back to admire the dun-gray barren that remains, and they sigh nostalgically, “Ah, Castile!”

  We came at last to the promontory between the lakes Texcóco and Xochimílco, what remained of the Culhua people’s once extensive lands. We smartly trimmed our formation to make a good show as we marched through the town of Ixtapalápan and, when we were past it, Blood Glutton said to me, “It has been some time since you saw Tenochtítlan, has it not?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Fourteen years or so.”

  “You will find it changed. Grander than ever. It will be visible from this next rise of the road.” When we reached that eminence, he made an expansive gesture and said, “Behold!” I could, of course, see the great island-city yonder, shining white as I remembered it, but I could not make out any detail of it—except, when I squinted hard, there seemed to be an even more shining whiteness to it. “The Great Pyramid,” Blood Glutton said reverently. “You should be proud that your valor has contributed to its dedication.”

  At the point of the promontory we came to the town of Mexicaltzínco, and from there a causeway vaulted out across the water to Tenochtítlan. The stone avenue was wide enough for twenty men to walk comfortably side by side, but we ranked our prisoners by fours, with guards walking alongside at intervals. We did not do that to stretch our parade to a more impressive length, but because the bridge was crowded on both sides with city folk come to greet our arrival. The people cheered and owl-hooted and pelted us with flowers as if our victory had been entirely the doing of us few Mexíca and Tecpanéca.

  Halfway to the city, the causeway broadened out into a vast platform which supported the fort of Acachinánco, a defense against any invader’s trying to take that route into Tenochtítlan. The fort, though supported entirely by pilings, was almost as big as either of the two towns we had just passed through on the mainland. Its garrison of troops also joined in welcoming us—drumming and trumpeting, shouting war cries, pounding their spears on their shields—but I could only look scornfully at them for their not having been with us in the battle.

  When I and the others at the front of the column were striding into the great central plaza of Tenochtítlan, the tail of our parade of prisoners was still trooping out of Mexicaltzínco, two and a half one-long-runs behind us. In the plaza, The Heart of the One World, we Mexíca dropped out of the column and left it to the Tecpanéca soldiers. They turned the captives sharp left and marched them off along the avenue and then the causeway leading westward to Tlácopan. The prisoners would be quartered somewhere on the mainland outside that city until the day appointed for the dedication of the pyramid.

  The pyramid. I turned to look at it, and I gaped as I might have done when I was a child. During my life I would see bigger icpac tlamanacáltin, but never one so luminously bright and new. It was the tallest edifice in Tenochtítlan, dominating the city. It was an awesome spectacle to those who had eyes to see it from away across the waters, for the twin temples on top of it stood proudly, arrogantly, magnificently high above every other thing visible between the city and the mainland mountains. But I had little time to look at it or at any of the other new landmarks built since I had last been in The Heart of the One World. A young page from the palace elbowed his way through the throng, a
sking anxiously for the Arrow Knight Xococ.

  “I am he,” said Xococ importantly.

  The page said, “The Revered Speaker Ahuítzotl commands that you attend upon him at once, my lord, and that you bring to him the iyac named Tliléctic-Mixtli.”

  “Oh,” said Xococ fretfully. “Very well. Where are you, Fogbound? I mean Iyac Mixtli. Come along.” I privately thought we ought to bathe and steam ourselves and seek clean clothes before we presented ourselves to the Uey-Tlatoáni, but I accompanied him without protest. As the page led us through the crowd, Xococ instructed me, “Make your obeisances humbly and graciously, but then excuse yourself and retire, so that the Revered Speaker may hear my account of the victory.”

  Among the plaza’s new features was the Snake Wall surrounding it. Built of stone, plastered smooth with white gesso, it stood twice as high as a man and its upper edge undulated like the curves of a snake. The wall, both inside and out, was studded with a pattern of projecting stones, each carved and painted to represent a serpent’s head. The wall was interrupted in three places, where the three broad avenues led north, west, and south out of the plaza. And at intervals it had great wooden doorways leading to the major buildings set outside the wall.

  One of those was the new palace built for Ahuítzotl, beyond the northeast corner of the Snake Wall. It was easily as big as that of any of his predecessor rulers in Tenochtítlan, as big as Nezahualpíli’s palace in Texcóco, and even more elaborate and luxurious. Since it had been so recently built, it was decorated with all the latest styles of art and contained all the most modern conveniences. For example, the upper-floor rooms had ceiling lids which could be slid open to admit skylight in good weather.