Other Time

by Mack Reynolds

  Don shook his head. "No. As soon as night falls, we pull our warriors back, as though they have gone home to rest. Each night we do this. But secretly we post reliable warriors, ones that can be trusted not to sleep and not to leave their posts. Let these sentries each have conches. When the Spanish attempt to escape, let the conches sound and let every Tenocha in the city spring to arms."

  He turned to Cuitlahuac, "Send out messengers to every tribe in all the valley and even beyond. Have every warrior who will serve you come to the city as well armed as can be provided. When the Spanish sally forth and try to return to the mainland, it will be the crucial point. We must capture and destroy as much of that army as we can so as to earn time for ourselves."

  Cuitlahuac said questioningly, "How do you know they will sally forth and try to escape? They are much stronger than they were before."

  "Because here in the city they cannot maneuver their horse troops and it is too easy for our warriors to hide from them. Cities are not good battlegrounds for armies—as the Nazis found out after they were sucked into the ruins of Stalingrad."

  The two Indians frowned puzzlement at him.

  He said, "It is not important. Malintzin will undoubtedly fight for a few days. He will sally forth into the great square. He will not be able to comprehend the fact that he is now on the defensive and his position is untenable. When he does make his sorties, attack with all your might. He must be shown that retreat to the mainland is his only alternative. When he does so retreat, we have him. The bridges will be removed and without boats he will not be able to cross the canals."

  Don turned to Cuauhtemoc. "Let one warrior out of ten be armed solely with the long poles with loops of rope on the end with which to pull the horsemen off their mounts."

  He had wanted to introduce la reata, the lariat, to the Tenochas for this purpose, but knew he had no time to train them. Besides, he didn't have the slightest idea of how to throw a lasso himself. Possibly he could work it out eventually, but it was always time, time, time. He was fighting time.

  The kettledrums began to sound from one pyramid, then from another; soon the whole town was arumble. Before it was over, Don was going to regret he had ever made the suggestion.

  The warriors began to congregate behind the shelters they had improvised all about the tecpan. Others appeared upon the top of the pyramid on which the three stood. Don noted that there were more men now with longbows and several with the new crossbows the craftsmen were making. The fire against the tecpan began.

  The new crossbows weren't as good as the Spanish ones by any means. Don doubted that they were even as efficient as the longbows, but they were better than the inefficient weapons the Tenochas had earlier. Once again, time was going to count here. The Indian workers were excellent and every crossbow they turned out would be better than the last. The quality of firepower would improve as the days went by.

  Don had been right about the sorties.

  Suddenly the huge wooden gate the Spanish had built in the tecpan opened, and Cortes and at least eighty horses came charging out, lances couched. They dashed valiantly across the square, lancing, swinging their swords mightily, and most of the warriors scattered before them. Some stood and fought; of those who did, most died.

  But from all directions came the clouds of arrows and javelins—from the rooftops, from the temple and pyramid tops, from behind the shelters, from the doorways of the community buildings.

  Armor protected the Europeans, but not completely. Here and there a man or horse went down.

  The Spanish charged completely across the square, cutting and lancing, their battle cries ringing on the air, calling upon this saint or that. Behind them, from the tecpan, the cannon roared and arquebuses boomed.

  "Waste of powder," Don muttered. "They don't have enough targets."

  His eyes narrowed as he saw a Jaguar Knight, with one of his improvised loops on the end of a long lance, dash out from a point of concealment and flick the noose over an unsuspecting horseman's head. He jerked, and the horseman crashed to the ground in a great clatter of armor. The Indian dashed forward, pulled an obsidian knife from his waist, and slashed the other's throat. Pedro de Alvarado galloped up and lanced him.

  Don shook his head. But at least the device worked. Cortes, Sandoval, and about twenty of the horsemen were heading at a gallop for the pyramid. They flung themselves from their steeds and, swords in hand, began the ascent.

  "Let's get out of here," Don snapped.

  Cuauhtemoc glared at him. "No. We'll stand and fight."

  "Like hell we will," Don said. "We're the command staff; we can't afford the luxury of standing and fighting. If anything happens to us, who is going to tell the warriors what to do? Let's get out of here. Around to the other side!"

  Cuauhtemoc, his longbow in hand, eyed the Spanish coming up the pyramid's side. "If we stay, we die?"

  "Yes," Don said. "Come on!"

  "This you know, my giant brother?"

  "This I know," Don lied. For all he really knew, they might have made a fight of it and even have thrown the ascending Spanish back, but he couldn't take the chance.

  He was no militarist, but he knew you didn't risk your general in a battle. Alexander had charged at the head of his Companions, the Macedonian heavy cavalry, but by the time of Caesar, the military had evolved beyond that.

  They scampered around to the far side of the pyramid and began the descent. Let the Spanish capture the top; they'd find nothing but the abandoned kettledrums, and kettledrums in Tenochtitlan were a dime a dozen. There'd be a new set of them banging away within minutes after Cortes and his men had abandoned the untenable position.

  The fight continued in the square for more than an hour, and then a trumpet sounded and the horsemen withdrew to whence they had come.

  "Big victory," Don grunted. He gave instruction to have the fallen Spanish weapons gathered up.

  The Indian warriors were filing back into the positions they had been driven from, and the heavy fire of arrows, crossbow quarrels, stones, and javelins was resumed. The top of the pyramid was reoccupied with its vantage point overlooking the main enclosure of the enemy and the many courtyards.

  Don didn't envy the Spanish position. He even felt a qualm or two for some of those below. Bernal Diaz, Avila, Fray Olmedo, and, of course, Malinche.

  He turned to Cuitlahuac who was again standing next to him on the pyramid top.

  "Above all, cut off their food; cut off their water. Let no canoes from the tecpan leave for the mainland and let no canoes from the mainland join them. At night, as well as day, allow them no access to the canals in their canoes."

  He sought into his memory for details of ancient warfare.

  He said, "Saturate pieces of cotton with oil that will bum, bind them to arrows, and fire clouds of them into their quarters."

  He thought some more. "The bodies of those who have died—do not bum or bury them. Let them stand in the sun for a few days. When they are covered with maggots and stinking, throw them over the walls into the tecpan." Cuitlahuac stared at him, obviously repelled. "This is necessary?"

  "Everything is necessary to defeat the Spanish."

  "This is not the manner in which the Tenochas have forever fought their enemies."

  "It sure as hell isn't," Don growled out. "This is total war. If I can start an epidemic in that camp, we've got it made. It's known as biological warfare."

  Chapter Twenty

  Captain-General Hernando Cortes simply couldn't get it through his head that the city was no longer his. For the next few days he fought it out. Over and over again, the Spanish sallied forth—sometimes the cavalry alone, sometimes both horse and foot.

  They soon found it was best to confine themselves to the great square. The moment they got into the narrower streets, rocks dropped down upon them from the flat rooftops like a rain. If they dashed into the houses to flush out the foe, the Indians fled over the roofs or into canoes in the canals.

  Cortes sen
t Ordaz to reconnoiter the Tlacopan causeway with four hundred footmen, and they were driven back after losing eight soldiers to the howling, screeching Tenochas who swarmed everywhere. They reported the bridges removed.

  And always the kettledrums boomed, all but driving the Spanish to madness.

  In desperation, the Captain-General had built three wooden towers from the top of which his soldiers could fire onto the rooftops. They wheeled them out at early dawn and before noon all three were in the hands of Cuitlahuac's braves, occupants either dead or prisoners.

  The Tenocha forces were continuing to accumulate captured weapons, especially swords, lances, and pikes, but also a few crossbows and even a couple more muskets. The latter were immediately pressed into service. The others were stored in one of the rooms of the Eagle clan buildings.

  During one of the rare pauses in activity, Don stared down at them. It came to him that even though the Indian warriors did not have the time to learn proper use of the sword, even improperly utilized it was better than the maquauhuitl, set with its obsidian blades. The Tenocha sword wasn't so bad when the warrior first went into action, but after a few snipes at Spanish armor, the blades shattered and the weapon was little more than a club.

  Don said to his constant companion, Cuauhtemoc, "Take these long knives of the Spanish and distribute them among those of your warriors who love most to use the maquauhuitl. At first they might seem awkward, but they will prove more effective against the footmen and the horses."

  Cuauhtemoc frowned unhappily, "These are not the traditional weapons of the Tenochas."

  Don grunted at that. "Well, we'd better start some new traditions then. Because we are never going to win a war against men with steel weapons while we carry stone ones."

  The other gave up. These days he seldom argued with this new blood brother of his. One seldom argues with gods.

  From their command post on the top of the pyramid, Cuitlahuac, Cuauhtemoc, and Don Fielding watched the progress of the battle. It had been going on four days now, at a pace that seemed almost impossible to maintain from the viewpoint of the Spanish. Surely, almost all of them must be wounded by now. Don tried to think of some new tactic that would break their morale to the point where they'd attempt to desert the city. He had to get them out in those causeways, into the canals, where they'd be helpless.

  It was the cavalry that gave him the most trouble. The horsemen, and the horses as well, were highly armored and the warriors had practically no defense against them. The Spanish lances took a terrible toll and the Tenochas could do little but run from them, only to be speared in the back.

  Somewhere, Don had read that horse should not charge footmen. Why not? The Spanish must have read: disciplined footmen. But still, why not? Why shouldn't cavalry charge foot?

  His eyes narrowed and he turned to Cuauhtemoc thoughtfully. "Come with me," he said and led the way down the pyramid back to where they had stored the captured Spanish weapons.

  There were some thirty lances and more than that number of pikes. The lances were half again as long as the pikes.

  Don said, "I want you to locate sixty of your bravest warriors. They must be absolutely fearless in battle and never have been known to run in the face of the enemy."

  "All we Tenochas..." Cuauhtemoc began.

  But Don Fielding held up a hand. "Some men are braver than others. I want the bravest in all Tenochtitlan. You will be their chief. Assemble these sixty warriors here in the courtyard."

  Don Fielding had never held a spear in his hands in his life, but he managed to get his message over. He demonstrated.

  "You advance in a straight line, two deep. Thirty of you in front, bearing these shorter spears, thirty in the second line, bearing these longer spears. You keep your line straight. No man dashes forward before the others, no matter how valiant. No man drops behind.

  "When the Spanish ride at you, at the command of your chief, the first line drops to one knee and their spears are grounded, like this, butt on the ground, the point extended upward at a slant, like this. The second line holds its spears firmly, at breast level, extended over the shoulders of the warriors who are kneeling. The charge of the horses is received with no man giving way, even though he go down to black death under the hoofs, the swords, or the spears of the enemy."

  These were highly experienced fighters, all Eagle Knights, the most highly experienced in Tenochtitlan. They immediately got the idea. Don wasn't thinking in such terms at the time, but at that moment the first primitive phalanx was born in Mexico.

  They drilled for the balance of the day, impatient to be left out of the combat sounds which could be heard from the square. Now that they had the idea, they could do a better job of drilling themselves than he could. Don left them and returned to the pyramid vantage point.

  It was upon this day that Hernando Cortes decided to utilize diplomacy in view of the fact that force was proving inadequate. Don found later than it was Malinche who made the suggestion.

  During a lull in the fighting, a small group of soldiers with shields came up on the walls of the tecpan surrounding Motechzoma, who was in his full regalia as the First Speaker of the Tlatocan high council. Evidently, he hadn't heard that he had been deposed. He held up his hands and the firing fell away completely, from both sides.

  He held that position and finally the Tenochas left their shelters and gathered beneath the walls or stood on nearby rooftops fully exposed.

  From the pyramid top, Don and his two Indian companions could barely make out the former chief's words.

  If the fighting stopped and the beams were returned to the bridges over the causeway, Malintzin and all his army would march out of the city and back to the sea where they would take their ships and leave this land forever.

  Somebody called something from the crowd that Don didn't catch.

  Motechzoma answered that Malintzin himself had given his word.

  The crowd stirred, whispered, murmured.

  Don said, "No." He said urgently, "We've got to end this."

  Cuauhtemoc said, "But they promise to go. That is what we wish."

  "He'll leave only temporarily. He's getting desperate and wants out. He'll regroup his army at Vera Cruz, get more reinforcements, and then return stronger than ever. We must inflict more casualties upon him. Many more. We must wound him as badly as we can."

  The crowd was still stirring. The Tenochas had not gone unharmed in this past few weeks of fighting. There was not a clan in town that hadn't lost its scores of warriors.

  Don said flatly, "They're listening to him. After all, he was their respected head war chief for years. Fire on him, Cuauhtemoc."

  "But he is an Eagle, a member of our clan! He is my uncle, our uncle, our kinsman."

  "But all he can think of is getting the Spanish out of the city, in hopes that all will return to be the same as before. It won't. You can never go back, and certainly he can't. Fire on him, Cuauhtemoc! If we don't, all is lost. Tenochtitlan is lost. The warriors must be kept at full fighting pitch."

  Cuauhtemoc said, "You know this to be the truth, giant brother?"

  "Yes. I know it."

  The other turned to a group of nearby slingers. "Bring him down before he says another word to influence the people."

  Their slings spun. A shower of stones rained.

  The Spanish soldiers below, who had been guarding the former war chief, had lowered their shields when it seemed as though his message was being received. He staggered back, hit several times.

  A cannon boomed and the crowded Indians scattered for cover. Motechzoma was carried away by the soldiers.

  Cuauhtemoc looked emptily at Don Fielding. "You know all. Is he dead?"

  Don shook his head in negation. "No. He lives, but the Spanish will kill him when they retreat. This is the final straw. He is of no more use to them whatsoever. He has, in their eyes, signed over to the Emperor Charles the Fifth all of New Spain. But his people have rejected him. He is of no use any longer and they
will murder him."

  "When will they attempt to flee?"

  "I don't know. One of these nights, but which one I don't know."

  "I thought you could foresee the future."

  "Some of it. But ... this I cannot explain to you ... but the future I can foresee is being changed. I myself do not understand. But every day that goes by, it is being changed more. How much longer I will be able to foresee anything at all, I do not know."

  The Indian shook his head. "The ways of the gods cannot be understood by man."

  "They sure as hell can't," Don muttered in English. "And usually they can't be understood by the gods, either." The Spanish took their final bitter pill two days later. Cortes, thinking that they had broken the back of the Indian resistance, sallied forth with forty of his horse and possibly eight hundred foot, leaving just enough of his force in the tecpan to man the walls and to preserve a reserve of horse in case of emergency. He was, on the face of it, out to deliver such a crushing blow that the city's defenders would be demoralized.

  At the far side of the square, Cuauhtemoc's Eagle Knights were drawn up in their simple phalanx, each man about three feet from his neighbors to each side. Behind them a drummer beat out the march, an innovation that Don hadn't thought of. Evidently Cuauhtemoc had.

  Cortes shouted his battle cry, swung his sword, and led his horsemen on the charge.

  He had without doubt never seen Indians so arrayed. Not in Cuba, not in Hispañola, where he had once campaigned against naked savages; not in Yucatan, Tabasco, or Tlaxcala. But it obviously never occurred to him that they would stand fast upon the impact of the cavalry.

  Cuauhtemoc snapped a command; the beat of the drum changed and his men came to a halt and dressed their lines. The Spanish were but a few yards away. He snapped another command. The drum broke into a staccato. The first rank knelt and grounded the butts of their pikes, the spearheads at a forty-five degree angle. The rear rank extended their lances over the shoulders of the first.

  Don Fielding was too far off to see the expression on the face of Captain-General Hernando Cortes when the reality of the situation hit him, but it must have come as a shock. Cavalry should not charge disciplined footmen. The axiom had been laid down long hence. But it was too late to reverse the charge now. The Spanish hit and impaled themselves on the spears, going down almost to a man before it was through.