[Aztec 04] - Tribute of Death

by Simon Levack

  My bare feet padded over the short distance in silence, but I betrayed myself by a hollow thump and a clatter as I crashed into something large and wooden with an impact that scraped skin from my knee.

  Only terror held me back from cursing out loud until I recognised a rare stroke of good luck. I had run straight into an empty maize bin.

  There was no time to think. I scrambled over the side, ignoring the pain as the top caught my wounded knee, and tumbled in. A cloud of dust filled the space around me, making me blink and pinch my nose to avoid sneezing.

  Half-crouching, I cautiously lifted my eyes above the top of the bin. From here I could see to the corner I had just rounded.

  A moment later I realised I had not been mistaken. I could hear hoarse breathing, the scratching sound of a sandaled foot on the path, and another noise I could not identify, a faint mixture of creaking and rustling. Then with a thrill of terror I realised I could see my follower as well as hear him, even with eyes watering from the dust in the maize bin.

  Something stood at the corner: a large, irregular shape, taller than a man and bulkier. It seemed to be swivelling this way and that, like a hunting animal seeking its quarry. There was nothing animal-like in its ponderous, jerky movements, however; nor in the one thing I recognised about it, a thin pale sliver of something catching the faint twilight as it turned. It was the unmistakable gleam of an obsidian blade. Whatever manner of creature was seeking me, he – or it – was carrying a sword.

  We stayed like that until I was gritting my teeth against the pain in my awkwardly bent legs. I reached up and clung to the top edge of my hiding place, to take some of my weight on my hands, and was rewarded with splinters in my fingers. My bladder began to ache and still the thing stood there, only paces away.

  All I could see distinctly was the sword. I could not take my eyes off its obsidian blades, lethally sharp razors set into the weapon’s hardwood shaft, giving it a cutting edge that could sever a man’s neck with one blow or peel off his skin in layers. They fascinated me so much, each blade catching the light in turn, that I did not at first grasp that they were moving slowly towards me.

  And then the monster was almost upon me. I ducked quickly, lowering my head and crouching deep inside the maize bin in silent terror while I listened to the creature’s slow, heavy breathing.

  When the breathing formed itself into a throaty whisper and the whisper became a word, something between a question and a gloat, I knew I was a dead man.

  ‘Yaotl?’

  At the sound of my own name I started so violently that my hiding place shuddered. The thing outside could not have failed to notice that. Even as I threw myself frantically against the side of the wooden container, trying to knock it over in a desperate bid to make it roll into the nearest canal, I heard the whisper transformed into a roar of rage and triumph.

  The first blow knocked my teeth together and set my ears ringing. With a crack of shattered wood the maize bin split. I heard a swish of air as the sword was raised for a second strike. I slithered from the wreckage, hands and feet scrabbling to propel me out of the way with all the strength they still had. Then came another crash as blades sank once again into soft wood. More blows followed, each more frantic than the last, but now they had a different note, duller, with a hollow ring. The monster had got his sword embedded in the remains of the maize bin and was swinging the whole lot against a wall in an effort to free the weapon.

  I seized my chance. I scrambled to my feet and ran. Luckily whatever sound I made was inaudible beneath the noise my assailant was making, the thumping and splintering and his own shouted curses.

  I stumbled blindly through the streets until there were no streets and I was wading knee deep in icy water and pushing aside stiff rushes that were taller than I was, and even then I kept going, never daring to look back but imagining the huge figure trudging relentlessly behind me, slashing at the stems with great sweeping strokes of its sword.

  Eventually my legs gave up, slipping from under me in the mud and pitching me face-down in muddy water. I hauled myself out by my arms, using them to drag my sodden, exhausted body onto a foul-smelling pile of muck that had been dredged from the lake bottom to make a channel for a farmer’s or a fisherman’s canoe. It only just broke the surface of the water but it was the only more or less dry place I could find.

  I knew I had to go on. I could not allow myself to rest here, in what might be my enemy’s country, among the wetlands where the captain was rumoured to lurk. Gritting my teeth against the pain in my legs, I urged them to lift me up once more.

  It was no good. I was at the end of my strength.

  I collapsed on top of the heap of silt and was unconscious in an instant.

  TWO RAIN

  1

  One of the rituals we priests had had to undergo to appease the rain god had involved throwing ourselves into the icy water of the lake at night and then running, naked, back to the House of Tears, where we would sit, shivering, until noon, covered only by a thin blanket. I had done this every year for twenty years, and it may have saved my life, for if my body had not been hardened by my priest’s training the chill and the damp might have killed me long before the sun had climbed high enough to share any of his warmth with me.

  I groaned, squinted and turned my head away from the brilliant disc. I had no idea where I was or how I had got here, and for a moment did not care. It troubled me that the surface I lay on was so rough and soggy, as if someone had taken both my sleeping mat and the roof of my house away in the night, just before an unseasonable downpour; and there was an unpleasant smell in the air. Still, I was not going to worry about it. I wanted only to turn around and go back to sleep.

  ‘Who are you? How did you get here?’ The voice sounded like a child’s: a little girl’s. I replied with a grunt.

  ‘You’re not drunk, are you?’

  If I could have summoned up the energy then, I would have shouted at her to go away and leave me in peace. All I managed was another grunt.

  ‘My brother said he thought you might be sleeping it off. I said I thought you might be ill.’

  I forced myself to turn over and open my eyes. The pale blue of a late morning sky and the bright light of the sun shining between tall stems made me squint.

  ‘But my brother said he’d go and get the parish police, because they’ll have you beaten to death. That’s what happens if they find you drunk. I know, my dad told me.’

  It took a moment for the girl’s words to penetrate my fogged, aching head, but when they did they were enough to jerk me at last into wakefulness. I did not need the girl to tell me what would be done to a commoner found drunk in public without a lawful excuse. It had happened to me once. I had been hauled off to the emperor’s notorious Cuauhcalco prison and had barely escaped with my life. I sat up with a cry of terror.

  ‘No!’ I yelped.

  The girl leaped backward in surprise. She looked to be about seven or eight, old enough to wear a blouse and skirt, both of which had evidently been made up out of material cut out of larger garments and roughly sewn together and patched.

  I glanced around anxiously. ‘Your brother – Where is he now?’

  ‘Over there. I dared him to come and wake you up but he wouldn’t. He’s scared.’

  ‘Nothing to be scared of,’ I declared hastily. There was a boy of about ten in a short cloak and breechcloth peering nervously at me from between two rushes. He appeared to be ready to bolt if I threatened him. ‘I’m harmless, really. I wouldn’t hurt a beetle.’ I smiled ruefully. ‘That’s even if I had the strength to! And I’m not drunk.’ I hesitated before adding the unavoidable question. ‘Er… that doesn’t mean I have any idea where I am, though. I sort of got lost. Can you tell me?’

  The girl looked at me through eyes that had suddenly narrowed with suspicion. ‘This is Atlixco, of course. Or at least the wetlands belonging to it. How come you don’t know that?’

  So I had gone around almost in a circle,
ending up not far from where I had set out. Blundering aimlessly through darkened streets, it would have been easy to do. At least I had saved myself a long walk back.

  With the memory of how I had come to be here came all the other things that had happened in the night: the funeral procession, the terror that had snatched me and the other men from sleep, the chase across the darkened city; all that, and the knowledge that whatever monster had been after me, it had known my name. I had not just been another unfortunate caught out of doors at night, at the mercy of ghosts and malicious spirits. I had been the thing’s intended quarry. But what had it been? What little I had seen of my pursuer had not looked human; and as Handy had pointed out, the captain, whatever else he might be, was a man. Or had he somehow been transformed – by sorcery or by the will of a god – into something else?

  ‘Who were you?’ I whispered. ‘How did you know where to find me?’ I was struck by another grim thought. It was too much of a coincidence for my follower and me to have encountered each other by chance, at night, in a part of the city I had not been to lately. But where had he – he or it – picked up my trail? At Handy’s house? At the shrine? Earlier?

  ‘What are you talking about?’ asked the girl. ‘Are you sure you’re not drunk?’

  ‘Quite sure. I don’t suppose you have any food?’

  ‘He has,’ she said, tossing her head to indicate her brother. ‘We were taking our father his lunch, because he forgot it again. But my brother won’t share it with you, because father will tie him up and stick cactus spines in him if there’s any missing.’ I considered offering to buy some, thinking a bagful of cocoa beans would be enough to deflect her father’s anger, but then I remembered I had no money.

  ‘Never mind.’ I stood up. ‘Where is your father now?’

  I did not want to scare the children off by telling them what had happened to me but I asked them whether they had seen or heard anything out of the ordinary. They had not, but as the girl, whose name was Xochiyotl – ‘Heart of a Flower’ – pointed out, they had only just come out from the city. Their father was more likely to be able to help me, having been fishing at the edge of the lake since before dawn.

  We found him where the rushes thinned out and gave way to open water, forlornly inspecting his mostly empty nets. At the sound of our approach, the splashing and slurping noises our feet made and rustle of tall stems being pushed aside, he whirled around as though in fear of being attacked from behind.

  I saw a solid looking man in a frayed and soiled breechcloth. When he first caught sight of us his eyes widened in shock, but they quickly narrowed with anger. His first words were to me: ‘Who are you? Where did you find these two?’

  ‘Well, it was more the other way round…’ He was not listening to me. He had already turned on his children, scolding them: ‘What are you doing here? Didn’t I tell you it’s not safe at the moment? I said you weren’t to come out here until it was over. What was your mother thinking of, letting you anywhere near the lake? I’ve a good mind to…’

  His son retreated several steps, his face pale with fright. His sister ignored her father’s outburst. ‘You forgot your lunch,’ she said, proffering a small cloth bag.

  ‘Never mind my lunch! There are worse things than hunger, don’t you know that?’ The man was sweating, although it was not warm, especially for someone in water up to his knees. ‘It’s dangerous out here!’

  I peered between the rushes and out across the lake. Its surface was a flat as a polished copper mirror, with scarcely a ripple except what was made by the occasional duck or heron. Nothing nearby broke it except fishing nets strung between poles. Beyond its far side loomed the mountains that edged the eastern side of the valley, with their foothills dotted with white houses. Among the many towns and villages on those hillsides was lord Maize Ear’s capital, and not far from it, the retreat where Lily and I had found refuge. From where I stood that shoreline was a tantalising sight. It looked so peaceful, and there was not so much as a canoe between it and me.

  ‘“Dangerous”?’ I echoed, suppressing the wave of nostalgic self-pity that threatened to overwhelm me. ‘Dangerous how?’

  He scowled at me. ‘Who are you?’ he asked for a second time.

  At that point his son finally nerved himself to speak. ‘I think he’s a drunk,’ he said importantly.

  ‘No he’s not!’ piped Heart of a Flower. ‘He told us he got lost.’

  The fisherman looked at me incredulously. ‘No-one gets lost out here. You only come here if you’re a fisherman or a farmer working on one of the chinampa plots, and we all know this place better than our own courtyards. So what are you really doing here?’

  I had to tell him. Apart from anything else I wanted to ask him whether he had seen anything like the monster that had attacked me. As I described the encounter I glanced out of the corner of my eye at the two children. The little girl was gazing at me with wide, awe-struck eyes, while her brother crept closer to his father and shivered.

  The man listened to me in grim silence. Then he said: ‘You’d better come with me.’

  We did not have far to go, briefly wading through brackish water until we reached a spot where a few broken and flattened stems showed where a small craft had been pushed into the rushes to hide it.

  ‘Here you are,’ the fisherman said.

  ‘I don’t get it.’ I looked at him sharply. ‘There was a boat here, I take it. Where is it now? Has it been stolen, is that what you’re showing me?’

  ‘Father, there’s nothing here.’ Now that his father seemed to have forgotten his anger the boy had become bolder.

  ‘I’m not in the mood to play games,’ I said, trying to sound menacing and succeeding only in provoking a chuckle, until the man decided he had had enough fun at my expense and pushed his way cautiously into the gap in the rushes.

  ‘Here,’ he said, stooping, ‘you’ll have to grab the other end.’ I stared at him for a moment. Then I realised that his hands were beneath the surface and tugging at something heavy.

  With the children looking on in silence, their father and I hoisted the wreck of a canoe into the air. I held onto my end for just long enough to see what had happened to it – to note the large, jagged hole in its bottom, a hole that must have been made by some tool such as an axe – before dropping it and letting it fall with a loud splash.

  It might not have been an axe, of course. The boat had sunk again before I had time to examine its timber for any flakes of obsidian that might have become lodged in it, but I knew it could just as easily have been sunk by a strong man wielding a sword.

  ‘That,’ the fisherman said, as he led us back to his nets, ‘is why I don’t want you children coming out here. This has been going on for days. It’s not safe. The boat’s only the latest thing to have happened.’

  ‘But who’d do something like that?’ I muttered, half to myself.

  ‘You tell me! Not to mention all the other fishermen and bird-catchers – they’d like to know too. Let me tell you, there are men who’ve been making their living off the water all their lives who won’t so much as dip a toe in it now, they’re that frightened. See this?’ He yanked a net out of the water. It held no fish, and the reason was obviously something more than bad luck.

  ‘Something’s torn it,’ Heart of a Flower observed.

  I looked at the net and the gaping holes in it, that made what was left of its mesh hang from its poles like limp rags. ‘Torn?’ I mused aloud, as I waded towards it for a closer look. ‘Torn or…’ I picked a section of it up, peering at ropes where they parted. I looked at two ends, frowned, and held them together, noting the way they matched.

  ‘You see?’ the fisherman said over my shoulder.

  ‘This was cut,’ I said, dropping the net. ‘It’s been slashed by something – a knife, something like that.’ I regarded him thoughtfully. ‘It’s not the first time, is it? And it’s not just you.’

  ‘That’s right.’ He looked about him, fearfully surv
eying the tranquil scene surrounding us. Nothing stirred, but it was difficult to see between the tall, dense rushes: who could tell what might be hiding among them? ‘Everyone who fishes this stretch of the shore – here, where it borders on Atlixco, and all the way south at least as far as Toltenco – it’s the same story for all of them. Someone or something has been raiding these nets, cutting them, stealing the fish, if there are any, and just ripping them apart if there aren’t. Anything like that boat that’s left unattended is smashed up. It’s not just theft – it’s as if whoever, whatever is doing this is trying to do more than just forage for food. It’s like he’s trying to scare us all away.’

  I recalled the strange, hulking form that had chased me, how its movements had not seemed quite human. ‘You said “or something”. What makes you think…’ My voice faltered at the look on the man’s face, the widening of his eyes, the slight slackness of his mouth and cheeks that betrayed the horror he felt.

  He hesitated before speaking again, and when he did open his mouth it was to whisper in a confidential tone, as though he did not want his children to overhear him. ‘I don’t know what it is. I haven’t seen it, but the ones who have, or who’ve heard it moving about… they don’t think it’s a man.’

  ‘What do they think it is, then?’

  ‘How should I know?’ His voice became hoarse with strain. ‘I don’t know if it’s a water monster, an ahuitzotl, or something worse, but from what I’ve heard… It moves wrong, it’s too big, it’s the wrong shape, and the one man who thinks he saw it up close – before he ran for his life, that is – he told me it doesn’t have a face.’

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