War God: Nights of the Witch

by Graham Hancock

  Then there were the weapons spitting flame and death that Ah Kinchil thought were Xiuhcoatl – the deadly ‘fire serpents’ with which, according to legend, the gods of both the Maya and the Mexica were armed. Once again, Cit Bolon Tun explained, there was nothing godlike about these white men’s weapons, which were called ‘guns’. They were certainly not fire serpents! In fact these ‘guns’ were not so very different from bows and arrows – which the Spaniards, indeed, also possessed – or from atlatls used to launch darts. Like bows, and like atlatls, guns were simply weapons designed by men to send projectiles flying through the air over long distances at high speed. They took the form of metal tubes and, instead of using the tension of a bow-string, or the leverage of an atlatl, they achieved their objective by means of a black powder which exploded when lit, produced great force and propelled balls of various sizes made of metal or stone into their enemies’ bodies.

  As to the ferocious war beasts of which Ah Kinchil had received reports, these were of two types, and Cit Bolon Tun had taken the opportunity of his time with the white men to study both closely.

  The first were about the size of jaguars and appeared to be unnaturally large and ferocious members of the dog tribe. They had huge jaws and sharp teeth and they went into battle dressed in metal armour like the white men’s own. This was why Muluc’s warriors had been deceived into believing that the beasts could not be killed by spears or arrows. Untrue! Remove their armour, or strike some part of their bodies that was left unprotected, and they could indeed be killed in the same way that jaguars – which the Maya knew very well how to hunt – could be killed. However, there was one thing that made these ‘dogs’ far more terrible than any other beast, and this was that they were trained by the Spaniards to obey their commands and execute their will. They were fleet of foot, had an exceptionally sharp sense of smell, and could detect the presence of their prey by scent alone, so that even if a man had fled far away and concealed himself in some remote place, dogs would be able to follow his scent over the ground, find him and kill him. Cit Bolon Tun had witnessed horrible scenes in which, for nothing more than their own amusement and sport, the Spaniards had arranged for native Taino of the islands to be hunted down and torn to pieces by their dogs.

  The second type of war beasts were about the size of large deer and were called ‘horses’. The Chontal Maya had not yet met them in battle, but it was only a matter of time before they did because the leader of the Spaniards, whose name was ‘Cortés’, was a great expert in their use and Cit Bolon Tun had often heard him boast how the Maya would be unable to stand against them.

  Like the dogs, these ‘horses’ wore metal armour, and if the dogs ran fast, the horses ran even faster, as fast as the wind, as fast as an avalanche. What was more amazing was that the white men knew how to mount themselves upon the creatures’ backs and attack their enemies from there, at terrifying speed, using their lethal spears and swords. ‘You must prepare our warriors,’ Cit Bolon Tun urged Muluc and Ah Kinchil, ‘for the shock of encountering the enemy mounted in this way. I myself have yet to see the Spaniards use their horses in battle, but I have seen them ride them in practice often enough. The air thunders with the beat of their hooves, the ground trembles as they charge, and the massive weight and momentum of the beasts is a weapon in itself, capable of smashing down any who stand in their way. Our men will lose courage at the very sight and sound of them and this will be all the worse if they are deceived into believing they confront supernatural beings, part-man, part-deer, as I myself believed when I first saw them. They are frightful, they are formidable, they are something quite beyond any foe the Maya have ever encountered before in battle, but they are not supernatural. They are men mounted upon the backs of creatures, and like other men and other creatures, they can be killed.’

  As these words were spoken, Malinal came into the dining chamber with beakers of water and tobacco tubes for the men to smoke. There was a sheen of sweat on Cit Bolon Tun’s face – undoubtedly from the effort of communicating all the terrible things that he knew. Muluc’s mouth gaped. Ah Kinchil sat staring blankly straight ahead, as though he had seen a ghost.

  ‘How many?’ the old paramount chief asked Cit Bolon Tun eventually.

  ‘How many what, lord?’

  ‘How many of these “horses”? How many of these infernal “Spaniards”? And what do you advise me to do about them?’

  The face of Cit Bolon Tun was grave. ‘My lord, I advise you to fight them night and day, without mercy and without fear while they are still few enough in number to be destroyed utterly. I have counted their horses. They have only eighteen! I have counted the white men and their entire force does not much exceed five hundred soldiers, of whom some have been left to guard their boats and some have undoubtedly been injured today. I very much doubt if the lord who is called Cortés will be able to put more than four hundred of his warriors into the field.’

  The ghastly triumphant smile that Malinal so hated was back on Muluc’s face. ‘Four hundred!’ he chortled. ‘Four hundred! When we have forty thousand.’ He turned to Ah Kinchil: ‘There, uncle! You see! It is as I said. These are not gods but men who have come so boastfully into our lands – and tomorrow, when we meet them in battle, we will devour them!’

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Cuitláhuac’s estate, Chapultepec, small hours of the morning, Thursday 25 March 1519

  The moon, waning but still close to full, cast its light through the open window of Guatemoc’s bedchamber where the prince lay on his back, his eyes open, staring up at the ceiling. Though his recovery had been remarkable (his doctors described it as a miracle), his wounds still pained him deeply and he was wide awake, thoughtful, his mind restless.

  Everything that had happened since Shikotenka had expertly ripped him apart on that hillside in Tlascala all those weeks ago had been extraordinary, wondrous and inexplicable.

  He had met Hummingbird, the god of war, and been told that it was not his time to die.

  And he had met Temaz, the goddess of healing, who had brought him back to life.

  Impossible to believe these two divine encounters were not connected!

  ‘A great battle lies before your nation,’ Hummingbird had told him, ‘but the weakling Moctezuma is not competent to fight it.’

  While for her part the Lady Temaz had urged him to defeat the plot against him and find the one who was truly responsible for it.

  Well, he knew the answer to that now!

  It had been Moctezuma himself who had sought to poison him. Mecatl had merely been a puppet in the royal hands. Of course his uncle had responded with feigned outrage when Mecatl revealed the truth under torture. He’d ordered the fat physician flayed alive and presented his skin to Guatemoc – as though that could possibly make any difference.

  No one dared challenge the Great Speaker, but the truth was the truth and it could not be divided. The only question now was what was to be done about it.

  As Guatemoc lay on his bed, silent and still, for the first time in his life seriously contemplating rebellion, a voice spoke to him out of the darkness.

  ‘How fare you now, Prince?’ the voice asked. The voice of a goddess.

  ‘Better than I could have hoped,’ Guatemoc replied, not allowing the sudden excitement he felt to reveal itself in his tone. ‘Perhaps better than I deserve.’

  The moonlight traced a bright path across the floor and in the midst of it there came some disturbance of the night, some ripple and sway of the empty air. A small, slim form emerged from nothingness, a hand reached out to touch him and he felt once again the mysterious radiance of divine power.

  There was a moment of communion, almost of bliss. So this was what it meant to be caressed by a goddess! Guatemoc attempted to raise himself on one elbow, but soothing warmth was pouring into his body in a great flood and he groaned and lay back.

  ‘Rest, Prince,’ said Temaz. ‘Do not struggle. I bring you the gift of healing. You must only accept it.�
�

  For a long while he felt her working on him, first removing his bandages, then delicately probing and touching with her fingers, all the while sending this incredible glow, this splendour, this tingling, revivifying heat into his wounds. She did not speak but sang softly under her breath, half a whisper, half a chant, as she continued these gentle ministrations and, little by little, trusting her utterly, he fell asleep.

  When he awoke, hours had passed, the moon was set, grey dawn was breaking and the Lady Temaz was gone.

  Leaving Guatemoc asleep, Tozi had returned to the safe house in Tacuba and now lay stretched out on a reed mat on the floor as the lakeside town awoke noisily to the new day.

  She had gone to the prince intent on talking to him about many things, and most of all about Quetzalcoatl, though she had promised Huicton she would not. But when she had seen Guatemoc in the moonlight, seen how wounded and vulnerable he still was despite his remarkable recovery from poison and from his dreadful injuries, she had known she must help him first before any talking was done.

  And she’d known she could help him. The healing spell had come to her unbidden, from some hidden depth of her heritage, and she had sung it for him in the moonlight all the night long.

  It was strange. Hated Mexica prince though he was, scion of a cruel and murderous family, a killer and a sacrificer himself, she nonetheless found she was strongly, indeed almost irresistibly, drawn to Guatemoc. She realised now that the attraction had begun the moment she’d first set eyes on him weeks before when he lay gaunt and wasted in the royal hospital, on the edge of death. She’d wanted to cut his throat but had ended up saving his life.

  There was good in him, that was why!

  She must have known it, she must have seen it, even then.

  And since there was good in him, she resolved, it was her job to nurture it and turn it to the cause of Quetzalcoatl.

  A thought crossed her mind as she drifted off to sleep. This attraction she felt for the prince, with his handsome, hawk-like face and his beautiful copper skin so warm under her hands? It wasn’t, was it, that foolish attraction a woman sometimes feels for a man?

  ‘Gods forbid!’ Tozi muttered, her eyes fluttering closed. She had no time for such nonsense.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Thursday 25 March 1519

  Thursday 25 March was the day of the Feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin and it started badly.

  After a night loud with the drums and whoops of the very large Indian force massing in the countryside south of Potonchan, an uncomfortable night during which the Spaniards once again slept in their armour with their swords by their sides, Cortés rose before dawn to inspect the horses and found them stiff, listless and not yet fit for battle. ‘They’ve been too long on board ship,’ Melchior complained from his perch on Molinero’s back, ‘and we couldn’t exercise them properly last night in the dark. Give us a few more hours to run them and get some more of this good grass into them and we’ll have them right for you.’

  The good grass in question was, at least, plentiful amongst the fruit trees of the walled orchard – now heavily guarded – that extended five hundred paces from the rear of the chief’s palace to the river. Already all the other grooms were up and about their business, some brushing down their masters’ horses, some leading them by their reins, some riding. Young Pepillo was there, too, following Melchior around as usual the way a puppy follows its master. ‘I’ll have secretary’s work for you tonight,’ Cortés told the boy. ‘King Charles must be informed of what we’ve accomplished for him here.’

  ‘I’m ready, sir,’ replied Pepillo. ‘And … sir … would you object if I were to try a ride on Molinero while we’re exercising him?’

  Cortés laughed: ‘It’s not my objections you’ll need to worry about, lad! Molinero has a mind of his own. He’ll have the final say in the matter.’

  Leaving the orchard as the sun rose, and hurrying back through the palace to the main square where the men would be mustering, Cortés was stopped by Gonzalo de Sandoval, who brought him the morning’s second piece of bad news. Little Julian had not been seen by anyone since the capture of the town yesterday afternoon, but during the night a sentry had found the interpreter’s shirt and Spanish breeches draped over the branch of a tree. Eventually the matter had been reported to Sandoval and now here he was reporting it to Cortés. ‘Looks like he’s gone back to his own people,’ Sandoval guessed.

  Cortés felt a surge of anger. ‘Damn!’ he said. ‘I should have anticipated this and had the squint-eyed cur killed weeks ago. He was a useless interpreter anyway, but all these months he’s been learning our strengths and our weaknesses, counting our numbers, and now we let him just prance back to the Maya and tell them everything he knows. They couldn’t hope for a better-informed spy.’

  ‘Most unfortunate,’ said Sandoval. ‘What do you think the damage will be?’

  ‘Less fear of us, better understanding of our weapons and our tactics. He’ll tell them about our cavalry, which I would have preferred to have been a surprise.’

  ‘If they’ve never seen heavy horse in action, Don Hernán, no amount of telling will prepare them for the shock.’

  Cortés laughed, his mood suddenly improving, and clapped the younger man on the back. ‘Let’s hope you’re right!’ he said and then asked: ‘How is it you don’t own a horse yourself, Gonzalo?’

  ‘Can’t afford one,’ said Sandoval honestly, ‘but I grew up on horseback before my family fell on hard times.’

  ‘You’ve trained with the lance? You’ve practised the charge?’

  ‘I have, Don Hernán, more often than I can count.’

  ‘Well, who knows? You may find yourself in the saddle again before too long.’

  With just twenty soldiers now assigned to guard the ships in the bay, made up of a few who had fallen sick and a dozen too badly injured to go immediately into battle again, the troops mustered in the main square of Potonchan numbered some four hundred and eighty determined, filthy, bearded men, formed up in sixteen ranks of thirty at the base of the pyramid. After they had heard Father Bartolomé Olmedo say Mass, Cortés reminded them it was the feast of Our Lady, thanked them fulsomely for their efforts the day before, which had been crowned with success, and told them to look forward to an even greater victory today. Cupping his hand to his ear at the drums and ululations of the Indians beyond the town, he said: ‘Hark to the noise the heathen make! We gave them a beating and they ran but now they’re back full of bluff and bluster, building their courage to attack us again. I say we don’t stay cooped up here to await their assault but take the battle to them instead. Do you agree, men?’

  There was a ragged cheer, some of the soldiers thumped their spear shafts into the ground, others beat their swords against their bucklers.

  ‘Very well,’ Cortés continued. ‘For those who missed the activity last night, our horses are all offloaded from the ships’ – he gestured towards the palace – ‘and put to pasture to get the aches out of their joints. They’ll be ready for battle in a few hours – I expect by noon. Meanwhile I want two companies of a hundred men each – volunteers all! – to conduct reconnaissance in force and learn the number and dispositions of the enemy.’

  From the reports of his spies, who’d been out around the campfires during the night, Cortés knew that some of the Velázquez faction had been busy sprinkling the wormwood of fear and doubt on the courage of his stalwart troops. Juan Escudero in particular had been working on the faint of heart, suggesting that further action against the Maya was ill-advised, that there was no gold to be had from them, and that it would be better to move on elsewhere rather than risk annihilation here. But Cortés had also been doing the rounds during the night and was reassured that the majority of the men were still solidly with him, their caudillo, and believed his leadership would bring them victory, honour and wealth. He therefore felt inspired to end his address with some verses from the eleventh psalm.

  ‘In th
e Lord I take refuge,’ he recited, sending his voice ringing out across the square:

  how then can you say to me: ‘Flee like a bird to your mountain.’

  For look, the wicked bend their bows; they set their arrows against

  the strings

  to shoot from the shadows at the upright in heart.

  When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?

  The LORD is in his holy temple; the LORD is on his heavenly

  throne. He observes everyone on earth; his eyes examine them.

  The LORD examines the righteous, but the wicked, those who love

  violence, he hates with a passion.

  On the wicked he will rain fiery coals and burning sulphur; a

  scorching wind

  will be their lot.’

  There was no shortage of volunteers for the reconnaissance in force. Appointing Alonso Davila to lead one company and Alvarado the other, Cortés summoned Francisco de Mesa, his chief of artillery, a short, stocky, middle-aged man with thinning hair, a spade beard and a broad, unemotional, sunburned face. After the horses had been brought ashore last night he had taken a brigantine out to the bay and returned with two of the lombards and sixty Taino slaves who would be needed to move the heavy cannon into battle positions. Mesa’s expression was, as usual, deadpan: ‘I expect you’ll be wanting me to arrange the fiery coals and burning sulphur to rain down on those wicked violent Indians,’ he said.

  Bernal Díaz, who judged the wound in his thigh to be superficial, had refused evacuation to the fleet and felt moved enough by the caudillo’s speech to volunteer for Davila’s hundred. Mibiercas and La Serna came with him, for what La Serna described as ‘a breath of country air’.

  Well, it was proving to be a great deal more than that. About three miles from Potonchan, the great north–south highway they were following skirted an outcrop of low hills, concealing them from the town, and a mile further south they were approached and attacked by a band of a thousand howling warriors. Huge numbers of arrows, darts and slingstones began to hail down on their armour and shields and they soon found themselves completely encircled.