Aztec Rage

by Gary Jennings

  AZTEC RAGE

  Forge Books by Gary Jennings

  Aztec

  Aztec Autumn

  Aztec Blood

  Aztec Rage

  Spangle

  Visit Gary Jennings at www.garyjennings.net.

  GARY JENNINGS’

  AZTEC

  RAGE

  ROBERT GLEASON

  AND

  JUNIUS PODRUG

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.

  Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

  AZTEC RAGE

  Copyright © 2006 by Eugene Winick, Executor, Estate of Gary Jennings

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  This book is printed on acid-free paper.

  A Forge Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor.com

  Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Jennings, Gary.

  Aztec rage / Gary Jennings, Robert Gleason, and Junius Podrug.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  “A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

  ISBN-13: 978-0-765-31014-9

  ISBN-10: 0-765-31014-7

  1. Aztecs—Fiction. 2. Mexico—History—Spanish colony, 1540–1810—Fiction.

  I. Title.

  PS3560.E518 A997 2006

  813′.54—dc22

  2006040187

  First Edition: May 2006

  Printed in the United States of America

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Joyce Servis

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Son of a Whore

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  In Durance Vile

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Dolores

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Los Conspiradores

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Avenida De Los Muertos (Street of the Dead)

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Forty-Eight

  Forty-Nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-One

  Fifty-Two

  Napoleon’s Ulcer

  Fifty-Three

  Fifty -Four

  Fifty-Five

  Cádiz

  Fifty-Six

  Fifty-Seven

  Fifty-Eight

  Fifty-Nine

  Sixty

  Sixty-One

  Sixty-Two

  Sixty-Three

  Sixty-Four

  Sixty-Five

  Sixty-Six

  Sixty-Seven

  Sixty-Eight

  Sixty-Nine

  Seventy

  Seventy-One

  Seventy-Two

  Seventy-Three

  Seventy-Four

  Seventy-Five

  Seventy-Six

  Seventy-Seven

  Seventy-Eight

  Seventy-Nine

  Eighty

  El Grito De Dolores (The Cry of Dolores)

  Eighty-One

  Eighty-Two

  Eighty-Three

  Eighty-Four

  Eighty-Five

  Eighty-Six

  Eighty-Seven

  Eighty-Eight

  Eighty-Nine

  Ninety

  Ninety-One

  Ninety-Two

  Ninety-Three

  Ninety-Four

  Ninety-Five

  Ninety-Six

  Ninety-Seven

  Ninety-Eight

  Ninety-Nine

  One Hundred

  One Hundred and One

  One Hundred and Two

  One Hundred and Three

  One Hundred and Four

  One Hundred and Five

  One Hundred and Six

  One Hundred and Seven

  One Hundred and Eight

  Requiem

  One Hundred and Nine

  One Hundred and Ten

  Raquel

  One Hundred and Eleven

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many people helped bring this book to fruition. We particularly want to thank Maribel Baltazar-Gutierrez, Eric Raab, Brenda Goldberg, Elizabeth Winick, and Hildegarde Krische.

  Information about historical places and events was generously provided by curators in museums and sites of antiquity in Guanajuato, San Miguel de Allende, Dolores Hidalgo, Teotihuacán, Chichen Itza, and other places in Mexico.

  We are also grateful for the assistance of José Luis Rodriguez, Dr. Arturo Barrera, Charles and Susan Easter, and Julio Hernandez.

  The most memorable aspect of any battle—and, having now experienced many of them, I can say this with authority—is its dizzying commotion and confusion. But of this one, my first major engagement with the enemy, I do retain a few memories more distinct.

  —From the War Narrative of Tenamáxti,

  leader of the Aztec rebellion in 1541

  (as related in Aztec Autumn by Gary Jennings)

  AZTEC RAGE

  ONE

  Mountains Where the Cougars Lurk, 1541

  I WATCHED MYSELF die.

  My nightmare took life as invaders emerged from the fog like fantasmas, ghosts in the mist, dark figures on great beasts, menacing as shadow gods risen from Mictlán, the Dark Place. I lay in the brush and trembled, my heart pounding, my throat aching for water, the ground shaking under me as powerful hooves pounded in advance of a thousand human feet. My spear was tipped with an obsidian point, but it would fare poorly against the charge of a warhorse wearing the thick leather guard called a Cortés shield.

  We set up the ambush in the rocky, mountainous terrain of Nochistian, waiting for the Spaniards and their traitorous indio allies to fall into the trap. As the fog settled, the enemy had come forth. Now I had a choice: to stay hidden and let my compañeros fight and die without me or to gather my courage and rise and fight an armored Spaniard riding a powerful warhorse.

  As I pondered the decision, the dark vision came to me again: fight and die. I saw a violent clash, my life blood escaping, my sin-blackened soul being pulled down to hell by clawe
d hands.

  The warhorses frightened me the most. It is said that it was not the small army Cortés brought with him twenty-odd years ago that defeated the mighty Aztec Empire, nor even the tens of thousands of indio allies he enlisted, but the sixteen great warhorses that carried him and his best fighting men into battle.

  There were no beasts like these in the One World before the invaders came. The great warhorses had terrified the Emperor Montezuma and his Eagle and Jaguar Knights, the finest warriors in all the One World. The warriors believed the tall, powerful, four-legged creatures were gods; what else could these denizens from Another World be but spirits of the Earth and Sky? They ran like the wind, crushed any before them under their heavy hooves, and made the warriors on their backs a hundredfold more deadly than those on foot.

  As a rider came closer, I realized that it was an indio on horseback.

  ¡Ayya! I had never seen an indio on horseflesh before. Horses were powerful weapons in war, jealously guarded by the Spanish, who forbade indios from owning or riding them. Tenamaxti, our leader, told us that the Spanish had mounted the caciques, the chiefs, of their indio allies on horseback so their foot soldiers could better follow them in battle. “The traitors who fight for the invaders call the horses big dogs,” Tenamaxti told us. “They rub the sweat of the horse onto themselves to get some of the beast’s magic.”

  Tenamaxti knows the invaders well, having lived in the Aztec capital the invaders now call Méjico City. He is known to the Spanish by the name they gave him, Juan Británico.

  Horses were not the only thing forbidden to indios by our new masters. When our leaders and gods failed us, the invaders captured more than the gold of our kings; they enslaved us with a terrible servitude: the encomienda, vast grants of power and privilege, fiefdoms given to Spaniards. We called these white men on their grand horses gachupines, wearers of spurs, sharp spurs they used to rowel our backs bloody as they stole the food from our mouths.

  Their mighty king, the one they call the Catholic Majesty, presses his seal on a piece of paper, and thousands of indios in a region are enslaved to a Spaniard who comes to the One World with one purpose: to grow rich on our labor. To this wearer of spurs we must give as tribute a share of all that we grow on our land or produce with our hands. When he wants a noble palace built for his comfort, we stop tilling our land and carry the stones and cut the timbers needed. We must tend his cattle and his horses but not touch the meat of the farm animals or mount the horses. ¡Ayya! When he demands, we must lend him our wives and our daughters.

  Is it any wonder that when Tenamaxti gave the call, we gathered as in the days of the great Aztec kings, bringing spears to kill these invaders who enslave us?

  As I watched the dark figures in the fog, one who rode taller in the saddle than any other appeared. ¡Yya ayya! It could be no other than the Red Giant himself, Pedro de Alvarado, the butcher of Tenochtitlán, a fiend with hair and beard the color of fire. Known for his rashness and cruelty, Alvarado was infamous second only to the Conqueror himself for his brutal atrocities.

  He first earned fame—and evil reputation—when Cortés was forced to leave Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital, and rush to Veracruz to defeat a Spaniard who had landed with a force of men, intending to deprive Cortés of his command. He left Alvarado behind in Tenochtitlán with eighty Spanish conquistadors and four hundred indio allies to hold the great city. Alvarado also held Montezuma captive. Paralyzed by his belief that Cortés had fulfilled the prophecy that the god Quetzalcóatl would return to claim the empire, Montezuma was easy prey.

  While awaiting Cortés’s return, Alvarado heard a rumor that the leaders of the city planned to take the remaining Spanish captive during a festival. A man of unlimited expediency and utter cruelty, Alvarado attacked first: As the festival began, his men opened fire on the people celebrating in the marketplace. But it was not Aztec warriors he blasted with cannons and had put to death with swords, spears, and harquebuses . . . a few notables and warriors were killed, but a thousand women and children were slaughtered in the orgy of bloodletting.

  Cortés defeated the Spanish commander who intended to usurp his authority and returned to the capital to find Alvarado and his men holed up in Montezuma’s palace and besieged by Aztecs angered by the massacre of innocents. Not able to defend their position, Cortés led his men out of the city, and it was in the retreat that Alvarado, the Red Giant, gained his greatest fame.

  On the evening that came to be called La Noche Triste, the Night of Sorrows, Alvarado achieved an immortal feat. The Spanish had retreated onto the causeways that led over the lake to the city. During heavy fighting, faced with a break in the causeway too wide for any man to leap, Alvarado, weighed down with heavy armor, turned his back on the Aztec warriors attacking him, ran to the edge of the causeway, stabbed his spear into the back of a drowning man who had already fallen into the water, and vaulted over to the other side.

  Many times I had heard his amazing tale, and now I realized he was the powerful foe in the dark vision of my own death that had haunted me.

  I could no longer lie upon the ground and tremble like a frightened child. I had to face the Red Giant. I rose, clutching my spear. In the tradition of a Jaguar Knight, I gave the cry of that fierce jungle beast to add the strength of the jaguar’s god to my own.

  Even through the din of battle that had erupted around us, Alvarado heard my cry. He swung in the saddle and turned to look at me. He spurred his great stallion, raised his sword and gave the cry of his war saint. “For Santiago!”

  I watched myself die.

  The vision of my own bloodied, lifeless body that had long haunted my sleep flashed as the warhorse charged, carrying on its back the most famous warrior in the One World. My wooden spear, even with its razor-sharp obsidian point, would not penetrate either the horse’s thick padded shield or the armor of the Spaniard. The only way to defeat the invader was to bring him down by making his horse fall.

  I threw my body at the horse’s knees, using my spear against the ground much as Alvarado had used a spear in his famous leap.

  My body broke the stride of the warhorse as if the beast had run into a huge rock. It began to topple onto me. I saw it, slowly falling . . . like a big tree, gathering speed as it came down on me. I saw Alvarado’s frantic, startled look as he, too, came down, toppled from his mount, flying headfirst to the rocky ground. I felt my bones breaking, my chest caving, no breath coming, as the huge warhorse crushed me—

  TWO

  Chihuahua, 1811

  AY DE MÍ! I erupted from the nightmare, trembling and soaked in sweat. I rolled off the cot and stood on the stone floor of the dungeon cell, unsteady at first, my knees weak, my heart still pounding.

  The dark dream of an Aztec warrior had come to me in sleep as far back as I could remember. A dream that was a vision of my own death. Why this nightmare had haunted me since I was a child, was a puzzle. It is said that I was born for the gallows, a gruesome fate I had narrowly escaped more than once. That I would die violently was not the stuff of dreams but the reality of the life I had led.

  The boom of the muskets of the firing squad came from the courtyard on the other side of the wall. I staggered over to the cell door. “¡Cabrones!” I shouted through the judas window. I gave the thick wood door a good kick. “Bring my breakfast, you cabrones.”

  This was my favorite taunt. A cabrón was a “he-goat,” a man who allowed other men to fornicate with his wife. Such an insult is a stake in the heart of any man, no?

  I gave the door another kick.

  Eh, I wasn’t really hungry. In truth, hearing a firing squad perform in the prison yard just outside my cell wall had quickened my blood. It was a reminder that I would soon dance a chilena de muerte, a courtship dance of death, except my rapid steps and twirling handkerchiefs would be for my executioners rather than a lovely señorita.

  A guard’s face appeared in the judas window. “Keep shouting and you’ll have mierda for breakfast.”

/>   “Señor He-Goat, bring me a plate of carne and a jug of wine, or your wife will taste the power of a real man before I burn your casa and steal your horse.”

  He fled, and I returned to my bed of straw. The musty smell of old wine hung in the cell, as if the monks who occupied it when the prison was a monastery had swilled too many jugs.

  Like the colony’s capital city, Méjico, “May-he-kô,” as the Spanish say it, Chihuahua was on a flat plain, almost surrounded by mountains. Several weeks’ journey to the south of the capital, its official name was San Felipe de Real de Chihuahua, but it was known simply as the Lady of the Desert.

  Nearly a mile higher than the distant sea, the region was not wet and green like the Valley of Méjico but brown and parched, with stingy grasslands, even though soaring peaks of the Sierra Madre Range were snowcapped. In Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, Chihuahua meant “dry, sandy place.” Dry, sandy snake pit, for one sentenced to die there.

  Sobbing, the sounds of a man’s anguish, came from the courtyard through the barred window above me. I covered my ears with my hands; I hated to hear a man’s tears.

  Shots boomed from the courtyard again. I flinched from the concussion of musket balls as they struck the rock wall at my back. The biting stench of black powder came through the window above me. Leaping up, I grabbed the window bars and shouted, “¡Cabrones!”

  Those he-goats would never hear Don Juan de Zavala whimper. I will not shame my Aztec blood with an act of cowardice when it is my turn to face the muskets. I will die as a Jaguar Knight facing the Flowery Death: No whimper, no plea for mercy would pass my lips.

  I sat back down and wiped sweat from my face with the dirty sleeve of my shirt. Sweltering August heat barged its way into my cell through the same window that allowed in death and pathos from the courtyard.

  I wondered who had just died on the other side of the wall. Was it a brave compañero I’d ridden with? They had come from every part of the land, by the hundreds, the thousands, and finally the tens of thousands, indios once again marching and fighting as Aztec warriors . . .