Aztec Fire

by Gary Jennings

  Diego wandered off with his wine-boda while Yaotl enthused over the game of tlaxtli.

  “The team that became the champion for the year was rewarded with treasure and women. But … ayyo … the captain of the losing team—like a warrior who fell in battle—was sacrificed.”

  “How?”

  “A priest cracked open his chest and ripped out his heart.”

  “A priest like Fray Diego?”

  “No, a real priest,” Yaotl said, his face contorting in derision, “nothing like that besotted padre-puta. Neighboring empires fought Flower Wars only over land or treasure, so their warriors could be captured and sacrificed.”

  “So their chests could be cracked like eggs and their beating hearts torn out?” I asked.

  “Divine sacrifice requites the gods for sun and rain and maize. Blood empowered them to push the sun and moon across the sky, to force the rain to fall and the maize to bloom. The blood covenant is a sacred gift to the gods, and for the giver, their sacrificial gift is an honor beyond measure.”

  “I like my heart where it is.”

  He slammed the ball into my stomach. I pushed the ball back, using my hands.

  “The gods received the blood from the losing captain’s body,” he said, “but the winning captain was given the heart to eat.”

  “Our gods have not had their blood feast for centuries. They must be down to parchment and bones. So why then do the sun, moon, maize, and rain continue to prosper?”

  “Stop blaspheming the Immortals and focus on the game.” Yaotl fixed me with a hard stare. “Remember, no hands. Hit the ball only with your shoulders, hips, buttocks, and knees. You can kick it, but that movement is rarely used. The ball is so heavy it can break your foot.”

  “What happened to the loser besides his heart being eaten?”

  “His head was flayed and dried, then wrapped in rubber and used as a ball. The rubber comes from trees that weep it on the other side of the mountains, where it’s hot and wet most of the year. They called it a skull ball and played the next championship tournament with it.”

  The fray stared at something in the distance.

  “Are they coming?” Yaotl asked.

  “I see a cloud of dust, but no horsemen yet.”

  “Holy Mother of Mercy,” I said, crossing myself. I didn’t know why I did that, but Fray Diego did it sometimes.

  The “they” Yaotl referred to were the Spanish. Under Father Miguel Hidalgo—a valiant priest who had declared all people equal—the indios had revolted en masse and lost. They’d died for a cause: for the dream that indios and mixed-blood peons were equal to the Spanish gachupines….

  Raising an army, Fray Hidalgo fought battles, freed the indios from their dreaded tribute, and even shattered the africano’s shackles. But in the end, a Chihuahua firing squad blew his tortured body into bloody oblivion. Now the Spanish visited their vengeance on all who followed the fray’s sacred dream.

  Fray Diego claimed that like Hidalgo, he suffered the curse of Odysseus—incurable curiosity—and that curiosity was now about to claim his life. The Odyssean curse had driven him to master gunpowder manufacturing. He knew that one of gunpowder’s key ingredients was sulfur, which the village had in abundant quantity. Saltpeter and charcoal were the other two ingredients. They could both be refined out of raw materials readily available to the village. Trees could be burned for charcoal, and the mountain’s bat caves combined with the village latrines would supply inexhaustible quantities of saltpeter.

  Fray Diego had turned the village’s tiny church into a black powder factory that was soon fabricating gunpowder for Father Hidalgo’s army of peons. He also organized a small gun factory, rebuilding old muskets and pistols. Yaotl had smuggled the gunpowder and arms to Hidalgo’s rebel army under wagonloads of manure.

  I was as guilty as Fray Diego and Yaotl. I helped Fray Diego make gunpowder, assisted in rehabilitating guns, and had hazed the mules hauling both black powder and weapons to the rebels.

  I admired my uncles for their courage. I had no faith, however, in the Spaniards’ view of Christian charity … especially as it impacted on our small village.

  The meek may be divinely blessed, but we had not been meek.

  Although our village was small, its contribution to the insurrection had been vast.

  Now, however, the Spanish viceroy was onto us. The king’s administrator of New Spain knew my uncles by name. My uncles had come down the mountain in the hope that if they faced the Spanish guns—sacrificed themselves in their own version of the Aztec blood covenant—the village would be spared retribution.

  My family had already paid greatly for the transgression. Caught smuggling the fray’s guns and powder to rebels, my mother and only sister had been killed.

  Like the ball game of tlaxtli, in the war against the Spanish the loser had his heart ripped out.

  FOUR

  YAOTL FEIGNED INDIFFERENCE to the distant roiling dust. I was less sanguine. The Spanish were coming. The battle would soon be joined, after which we would join our ancestors—and commence our journey through the Nine Hells.

  “You must leave soon, return to the village and tell them to stay away from their homes until they are certain the Spanish will not punish them.”

  “They already know that, you told them before we left.”

  “Then tell them again.” He gestured around him, a sweep with his arms. “Look around you, boy, what do you see?”

  “Old ruins—”

  “No, you see greatness. A rich and mighty empire built these great stone monuments. Men who stood as tall as gods.”

  He pointed at the Atlantean Warriors. The giant stone warriors each carried an atlatl, a throwing stick used to hurtle a spear much farther than a man could normally throw it. Spread across the chest of each giant was a butterfly—not a delicate-looking insect, but one of power.

  “The collector of hearts,” Yaotl said, pointing to a particularly imposing stone deity. “He’s a god named Chacmool. The priest placed the hearts in the dish he’s holding.”

  Chacmool was a reclining figure holding a dish on his belly. A sacrificial dagger was strapped to his upper arm.

  “People besides ballplayers were sacrificed?”

  “By the thousands. To satisfy the blood covenant,” Diego said, rejoining us. “Another barbaric custom of your indio ancestors that Yaotl makes light of.”

  “Blood for food,” I said.

  “Exactly so,” Fray Diego concurred.

  “Leave us alone and drink your vino,” Yaotl said. He nodded at the dust cloud in the distance. It had grown larger. “There are some things the boy should know about his ancestors and soon he will have to go.”

  Yaotl told me that Tula was also called Tollen. “A large city, perhaps as many as fifty thousand, not counting slaves. With many fine buildings, palaces, and houses for people to live in. All the peoples of the One World admired and envied the people of Tula. When the empire grew weak, the Aztec and other tribes preyed on it. They vandalized the palaces and temples, carrying off the stones to build their own edifices with the same designs they saw here. Then the Spanish took more, using the stones to build the temples they call churches.”

  “But it was once the greatest city on earth?”

  “During the reign of its glorious god-king, Quetzalcoatl.”

  “The Feathered Serpent,” I said.

  Quetzal was a bird with bright feathers and coatl was the Nahuatl word for “snake.”

  “Quetzalcoatl of Tula was the greatest king in the history of the One World,” Yaotl said. “He bore the title of god-king because he was born of a virgin mother. Although his father was the king, he did not impregnate Quetzalcoatl’s mother. She conceived Quetzalcoatl when she swallowed a piece of jade.

  “When Quetzalcoatl was still a boy, his father was murdered and he fled the city. He hid in the wilderness where birds and animals taught him to survive, endure, fight, and prevail—but to also revere justice. Returning as a y
oung man, he raised an army. He conquered the city and became its rightful king. Wise, brilliant, and brave, he forgave his enemies and created a peaceable kingdom in Tula, using knowledge gained from the beasts of the wilderness. Unlike the priest and warrior classes established in power, he did not believe in human or animal sacrifice or cannibalism. Because the people believed so strongly that a failure to sacrifice would offend the gods, he permitted it, but insisted that only flowers and butterflies be sacrificed.”

  Yaotl told me that this mighty red bearded king of my people was tall, powerfully built, and a master builder who created not just a fabled city but re-created his people as well, introducing them to the arts of sculpting, pottery-making, and jewelry design. Their artistry—as well as their science, mathematics, and military might—would become the pride and envy of the One World.

  “No king or nobleman in the One World would eat off plates made anywhere but Tula.”

  A time of wonder and plentitude. Besides massive ears of maize, bumper crops of beans, avocado, tomatoes, and chocolate abounded. Cotton grew not just alabaster-white but in iridescent rainbow shades, while brightly colored quetzal birds warbled poetry and harmonized melodious songs.

  “These are not tales to amuse children, but sacred truth,” Yaotl said. “Ask the priest, he’ll tell you.”

  “Yes, it’s true,” the Fray said. “Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, the priest who recorded the history of the One World, wrote that under Quetzalcoatl’s rule, beans were superabundant, gourds gargantuan—too vast to envelop in your arms—ears of maize the size of your thighs. He confirmed cotton of all colors was harvested—red, yellow, brown, white, green, blue, and orange … colossal cocoa trees growing grandiose and garish-hued … Incomprehensibly rich, Quetzalcoatl’s subjects dwelt in a land of plenty, in a prosperous and serene kingdom, lacking nothing. That is what he wrote.”

  “You see,” Yaotl said, “even the Spanish dogs stood in awe of the glory and the dream that was Tula—before, of course, they grew wealthy and fat from raiding our homes, raping our women, and ransacking our land.”

  Yaotl told me that Quetzalcoatl had spurned the priests and warriors who longed for the old days of conquest and sacrifice. “Despite the bounty Quetzalcoatl dispensed on his people, the priests and warrior class still subscribed to the blood covenant, fearing that without the blood tithe, the people would starve, and their world destroyed.”

  Quetzalcoatl could create miracles, but he had a fatal flaw that could be exploited by his enemies—his love for his own sister.

  “Forbidden lust,” Fray Diego said, “for which he’ll burn in hellfire everlasting.”

  “They got him drunk,” Yaotl said, “but more than that, they stole his mind with forbidden mushrooms which they mixed in his pulque. Deprived of his senses, the evil priests maneuvered him into his sister’s bedchamber. Awaking the next morning in shame and disgrace, he countered charges of incest by declaring himself a mortal god—beyond the laws of humankind. Mortals could err, a mortal god could not.

  “He left Tula and journeyed to the Eastern Sea which Veracruz overlooks today. He set sail on a raft made of intertwined snakes to seek out the abode of the gods. Before he left, he told his followers that he would return in a One Reed year.”

  “I know the rest,” I said. Every schoolboy knew the story of Montezuma and Quetzalcoatl. “The Spaniard Cortés had a red beard and hair, and he landed at Veracruz in a One Reed year. The Mexica emperor, Montezuma, thought Quetzalcoatl the god had returned. Cortés’s landfall frightened the emperor into indecision. Had fear of Quetzalcoatl not so paralyzed Montezuma, his army would have easily defeated the small Spanish force.”

  Yaotl nodded. “True, true, but he waited too long. Cortés bedded the woman Marina, who had quickly mastered both Cortés’s language and loins. She forged for Cortés the tribal alliances with which he annihilated their hated foe, Mexicas. Those tribes provided thousands of warriors that fought alongside the Spanish. And of course one day the Spanish dogs turned on those allies and conquered them.”

  “Uncle, what you are telling me is that the people of the One World were conquered by the Spanish because of the legend of the last great king of Tula.”

  “A Spanish force of less than six hundred,” Fray Diego interjected.

  “Revenge.” Yaotl’s lips smacked with satisfaction. “The ghost of Quetzalcoatl took revenge on the Mexica and other tribes that attacked Tula after Quetzalcoatl left the city. You see, boy, without the mighty king, Tula could not survive because it had incurred the worst possible sin—envy.

  “All the other tribes—especially the bare-ass, barefooted Mexica-Aztecs—looked upon the golden city as a prize to possess.” Yaotl shook his finger. “But before the barbarians could destroy the city, after Quetzalcoatl left, its own leaders plundered the city’s wealth and dissipated its might. Bringing back human sacrifice, they added a new type of immolation—the arrow sacrifice, no doubt learned from the barbarian tribes to the north. The victim was tied to a rack, white paint applied over his heart, then he was used for target practice while his blood dripped on the ground to fertilize the earth. The victim took much longer to die than having his heart ripped out.

  “They built racks on which to mount the decapitated heads of enemies and defeated ball game players. The new priest-kings despoiled the empire through war, greed, and stupidity. One war was even fought over the size of a woman’s buttocks.”

  “What?”

  “Sí, it is the truth. King Huemac ordered a subservient tribe to provide him with a woman whose buttocks were four hands wide. When they brought him a woman, he rejected her and insulted the tribe. They called him ‘Big Hands’ and her rump wasn’t big enough for a span of his hands.”

  “What happened to Big Hands?”

  Yaotl shrugged. “Tula was defeated, and he was killed in the war that followed. But things got even worse. Tula called the people of the dry northern desert ‘dog people’ because they wore animal skins, ate raw meat, and used bows and arrows. The Mexica-Aztecs were the most savage of these barbaric wanderers, and they resented the Toltecs’ scorn. As the Mexica-Aztecs grew in power, they eyed the great city with ire and envy. At last, allied with other tribes, they attacked and ravaged the golden city.

  “But the Mexica-Aztecs never forgot the greatness and grandeur of Tula. They envied everything Toltec. Their royalty married princesses of the Tula royal blood to improve their ‘barbarian’ bloodlines. They pillaged Tula’s arts and crafts, its mathematics and science, and passed them off on the unsuspecting Spanish as their own.”

  “Tell him about the treasure,” Fray Diego said.

  “What treasure?” I asked.

  “Quetzalcoatl’s,” Yaotl said. “Before the god-king left Tula, he is said to have hidden a vast treasure—perhaps under our feet right now, in a secret room beneath the pyramid. Or perhaps in a cave in the mountain. Many men and kings have hunted for his treasure, and their hunt has invariably visited evil luck on the hunters.”

  Presaging Death, our yellow dog barked at the distant dust devils.

  FIVE

  THE HOUNDS OF hell.”

  Fray Diego pointed to the west. The dust cloud billowed above a troop of cavalry. The soldier riding point carried the crimson and gold standard of a Royal Militia company.

  “Fifty or more,” the fray said. Drained of blood, his face was deathly white. His lips quivered, and his jaw trembled in and out.

  “Riderless horses will trail them home,” Yaotl said, curiously without fear, an odd satisfaction in his voice.

  This day came to all warriors—the final day—and he seemed ready for it. He was a great warrior, but I waged war as well. I had mixed gunpowder, rebuilt muskets, and pistols.

  In contrast, Yaotl wielded a spear and knife with black, razor-sharp, volcanic obsidian to do the cut-and-thrust work—the weapons of his ancestors.

  Still his spear would not carry a tenth as far as the Spanish musket balls I had supplied our troops.
A musket ball could blow a hole out the back of a man and pass through three more standing back to back.

  Moreover, fighting fifty soldiers and sustaining innumerable wounds conferred greater honor-in-death—at least in Yaotl’s mind—than succumbing to a single musket ball.

  Indifferent to honor, I was afraid. My knees buckling, my throat burned with the urge to cry. But I could not dishonor my uncles and the memory of my mother and sister and flee. Too many nights Yaotl had instructed me over a campfire on the Way of the Warrior: Never show your back to an enemy. Stand and fight. Die with honor—all wounds in the front, none in the back.

  Yaotl killed the yellow dog with his spear. “Put it at my feet after I die,” he told the Fray. “He will be our guide through the Nine Hells of Mictlan.”

  Fray Diego said nothing. Faithful to his own creed, he would not mock Yaotl’s.

  Yaotl, meanwhile, was still descanting on the Nine Hells of Mictlan. Mictlantecuhtli, Yaotl explained, was the skull-faced king, who ruled the Mictlan Underworld. Those damned to that sepulchral underworld faced nine challenges, one at each hell-level—the challenges of crossing a raging river, avoiding continuously colliding mountains, traversing a ridge of razor-sharp obsidian glass, enduring an icy wind that cut like blades, ducking violently swinging banners, surviving volleys of arrows, negotiating a valley of vile bloodsucking beasts, and scaling slimy rocks. If the challengers prevailed, their souls were scattered as dust, conferring on them the gift of oblivion. However, the Lord of the underworld had one last trick, many said. At the final level Mictlantecuhtli had erected a mystery obstacle that few could triumph over.

  Those who failed were doomed to repeat the struggle.

  I did not understand why Yaotl feared he would face the Nine Hells.

  “You told me,” I said to Yaotl, “that when a warrior fell in battle, or was sacrificed, he did not suffer the Nine Hells.”

  “True. If I fall in battle, I will ascend to the House of the Sun, a paradise across the Eastern Sea. There I will feast on fine food, bed beautiful women, and wage mock battles with my companions. My sole warrior duty will be to rise with the Sun God each morning and serve in his honor guard each day, as he crosses the sky.” He shook his head. “But that was the fate of a fallen warrior when the gods of my people were strong. The Christian God is more powerful. If my gods lack the strength to raise me up to the House of the Sun, Mictlantecuhtli will pull me down into the Underworld.”