by Robert Adams
The captain was not a born hidalgo, though he had lucked into a marriage with a born hidalga, so his children would all be hereditary nobles; he had become a caballero in the same way as had Angel — well-witnessed bravery during the wars which had ended the brief secession of the Kingdom of Yucatán some twenty years earlier. He knew that he probably would die still a captain, as he could never seem to accumulate the funds necessary to purchase a higher rank, not with a household to maintain, sons to arm and outfit and daughters to decently dower. But soldiering was the only trade he owned and he had no option but to pursue it.
His taste and meager purse did not run to fine brandies, but rather to raw tequila and mescal, though he was unstintingly lavish to his guests and officers with what little he did have. He and Don Angel seemed cut of the same bolt — they thought similarly about almost all topics, they spoke the same language and both were more than a little wary of the young hidalgos who were Don Jorge’s lieutenants — so they quickly became fast friends.
The winding road across the desert — blisteringly hot by day, bitterly cold by night-measured almost five hundred kilometers from the north gate of Ciudad Chihuahua to the south gate of Ciudad Juarez, usually a two-week journey. But this trip proved anything but usual.
Three days out, a wagon axle broke just as the day’s march was commencing. Then the axles of two more gave way that afternoon. Nor was there anything for it but to halt the entire column while sweating, blaspheming drivers and infantrymen offloaded the vehicles, jacked them up and set about fitting on spare axles. While one of the afternoon crews was gathering flattish rocks to help brace the jack, a sergeant of infantry was bitten in the cheek by a huge rattlesnake and died within minutes of fear-induced heart failure. And that day was only the beginning.
Two days further on, the point galloped back to report the discovery of a battlefield. With Don Maylo, Don Angel and his handful of lancers, plus a couple of squads of his own, Captain de las Torres followed the point back to where the other scouts waited.
The sight was grim enough. The bare-picked bones of at least thirty men and a dozen horses lay in and around a shallow depression. No weapons, equipment of man or horse or even boots were left, but such bits of stained, ragged, sunbleached cloth as remained caused the bandy-legged captain to frown, squint and purse his chapped lips.
“Lancers and dragoons, a mixed troop of them,” he said softly to Dons Maylo and Angel and the lieutenant of scouts, Don Esteban. “Either from La Forteleza or from Fuerte Media, surely, but in either case, why in hell were they bound south? To meet us? Why?”
But the grinning skulls about his feet could give no answer.
The column’s marching order was immediately tightened and van- and rear-guards were reinforced, two echelons of flank riders were set out to pace the advance, infantry marched and cavalry rode in full gear with ready weapons. The perimeters of night camps were tightly patrolled by alert sentries walking overlapping posts. But the train reached the halfway point, Fuerte Media, without incident.
The low, adobe houses surrounding the desert fort were almost deserted, all the inhabitants being packed within the strong walls, apparently with all their livestock and personal possessions. No room remained for the wagons and horses or even for more than a bare handful of the men of the column, so Captain de las Torres disgustedly billeted both men and animals in the empty homes, blocked the one street and the interstices between the houses with his wagons and ordered a strong guard while he went to confer with the fort commander.
With the formalities completed amid a chorus of chattering men and women, screaming, scurrying children, the ceaseless lowing of cattle, the barking of dogs and the hubbub attending the sudden onslaught of one burro stallion against another, Captain Juan Alvarez led his three visitors to his office, where a reddish hen sat in the middle of his cluttered desk. With a wave of a short, pudgy arm, the commander sent the fowl fluttering and scolding out the window, leaving a brown egg behind.
When all had been seated and served with half-liter mugs of tepid pulque, the short, stout, florid infantry officer gave what little information he had, most of it secondhand.
“It was a fortnight ago, Don Jorge, that Major Don Vicente rode south with his mixed troop, all that were left, he averred, of the cavalry contingents of La Fortaleza.”
“A little over a troop?” snapped Don Jorge, incredulously. “Out of six troops of lancers and two of dragoons?”
Alvarez just shrugged his shoulders, spreading his hands, palms upward, over his bulging belly. “Señor, I relate only that which was told to me. Don Vincente said that the peoples of the wastes had banded together and were attacking anyone who tried to either enter or leave the cities or the fortress. Worse, they were creeping under the very walls by night, loosing fire-arrows into the cities or killing the wall guards and scaling the walls to loot and rape and murder, to set fires and destroy food stocks.”
The commander raised his mug and gulped noisily, then went on. “In the beginning, lancers were dispatched every time these outrages occurred, but losses were so heavy, what with ambushes in the dark, that the Commandante forbade any more night patrols, no matter how serious the matter. Instead, he sent infantrymen to reinforce the wall- and gate-guards.”
Don Jorge nodded. “The wisest decision, of course. But how, by the four-and-twenty balls of the Twelve Apostles, could over three hundred cavalry have been lost in a few piddling skirmishes?”
“They were not so lost, Don Jorge,” stated Alvarez. “They were killed in a battle. Raiders had gotten into the northern city one night and opened the north gate to admit scores of their ilk; the guards had fought all night long to hold the citadel and the wall towers, perforce leaving the poor citizens to their terrible fates at the bloody hands of the barbarian butchers.
“With the dawn, the brazen swine commenced to troop out of the blazing city, laden with loot of every description, mules, horses and livestock and even female captives. When this dreadful sight was seen through long-glasses from the walls of the fortress, the Commandante himself had all of the cavalry assembled and led them out in pursuit of the reavers.”
The fat officer’s voice dropped almost to a whisper. “Within sight of the fortress, a thousand or more men rose up from hiding places or rode out of arroyos and completely surrounded the Commandante and his men, piercing dozens, scores with clouds of arrows, like fish in a barrel, before closing with lances, spears, sabers and axes.
“Three officers and twenty-nine men fought their way back to where the wall archers in the fortress could cover them, and those were the men commanded by Major Don Vicente when he passed through here, bound to report the disaster to El Duque-Grande at Ciudad Chihuahua. The good God rest his soul, he was a gallant caballero.” The fat man signed himself, reverently.
Captain de las Torres and Don Angel also crossed themselves, then the captain asked, “And that is the reason why your fort is so overcrowded, eh?”
The commander had again been applying himself to the mug of pulque. Hurriedly lowering it, he shook his head vigorously. “No, Don Jorge, the night after Don Vicente and his men had ridden onward, many, many fires were seen in the hills to the northwest. The next morning, several scores of riders were seen no more than a half mile away, riding south. That was when I felt it would be best if the families of my garrison and the other folk of the village came within the fort.”
“And these hombres, when did they ride back?” demanded Captain Jorge.
“For all that any of us knows,” replied the plump officer, “the bastardos are still in the south, or out there in the hills.”
Captain de las Torres’s tone betokened both exasperation and disgust. “You have not at least scouted out the flanking hills, Captain Alvarez?”
The officer leaned as far over his desk as his belly would permit. “Captain Don Jorge, as you know, my garrison includes one squad of lancers. What could ten men do against so many? Call me coward if you will, but I thought i
t better to simply wait, without risking my men’s lives, until either your train or a relief column from Ciudad Chihuahua reached us.”
Captain de las Torres sighed. “No, I’ll not name you coward, overcautious, perhaps, but . . . hell, who can say what I might have done in your place. Well, assign a man of your squad to each of my patrols and I’ll have the hills scouted out today. For tomorrow, hmmm.” He sat for a moment or two pulling at his spade beard. “I think it might be better if you, your garrison and all these civilians marched on to La Fortaleza with my column. A force of hostile men as large as that mentioned by the late Don Vicente could overrun this dungheap within hours. You’ll all be safer, and your troops will be of more value, at La Fortaleza, than huddling here, so overcrowded that you’ll likely all die of a fever if the enemy doesn’t get you first.”
* * *
Later, as the captain, Dons Maylo and Angel and two of de las Torres’s lieutenants sat about a round, knife-scarred table in the main room of what had been the village cantina, now requisitioned for their headquarters, the train commander stated bluntly, “This whole business is so fantastic as to smack of downright impossibility — save that I’ve known Fat Juanito for many a year and, while he has many vices, lying is not one of them. But all the same, never within the memory of man have the riffraff, bandits and skulkers combined into a force of such numbers. Usually, they spend more time fighting each other than they do attempting to prey on us, on our columns. And to attack walled cities and a reinforced squadron in open battle, such a thing would be called an impossibility by any officer who heard of it. Yet, we all know that they . . . that someone wiped out a troop, at least.
“We could, of course, go back to Ciudad Chihuahua and march back with a relief column, but it is probable that our men and our supplies are now desperately needed by the folk to the north. Possibly another officer might decide it best to stay here, at Fuerte Media, send dispatch riders back to Ciudad Chihuahua and hope for the best; but I feel that this place is now untenable, for many reasons.
“No, señores, it is my intention that we march north in the morning, with Captain Alvarez’s garrison and their dependents, all supplies and military materiel and such stock as can easily be transported or driven. This is my decision. However, I am always open to suggestion.”
So saying, he leaned back in a creaky chair and sipped at a measure of mescal, his black eyes roving from one to the other of his companions.
Teniente Gregorio, slender, foppish and always keenly conscious that he was an hidalgo — Don Maylo’s clearest recollection of the eighteen-year-old junior officer during the march was of his two-day sulk after Captain de las Torres countermanded his order to have the men laboring to repair the wagons whipped in order to speed their progress — lisped, “Capitán, I agree that we should take most of the garrison of the fuerte, but why should we burden ourselves with this useless gaggle of women, children, pigs and chickens? They probably lack decent transport and will slow our advance to a crawl, robbing us of such little maneuverability as we now have.”
De las Torres set down his cuplet and leaned forward. “Teniente, even with your limited military experience, you must be aware that Fuerte Media would not withstand any really determined enemy for a day, even with a full garrison. For us to strip the best part of the garrison and then march away would be to condemn those left behind to the uncertain mercies of an enemy, and I, for one, could not do so coldly callous a thing. Besides, just how dependable would our impressed troops be, knowing that their families had been left behind unprotected, eh?”
Teniente Gregorio’s handsome face twisted as if to spit out something distasteful. “Pah! The Capitán should have been a priest. Such soft sentimentality is not for soldiers.” He looked at the other men for approval. Don Maylo’s face was a blank, Don Angel looked cool and wary, the other junior officer, however, allowed the ghost of a smile to flit momentarily over his full lips, and this was enough to fuel further remarks from Gregorio.
“Besides, these so-called soldiers, from their gross commander on downward, are nothing but ignorant peones. They will fight when told to, or the gibbet and the whip will reward their insubordination. Were you wise, you’d leave old Capitán de Puerco behind. He’s too fat to march, and no doubt he’d quickly wear out a horse.” He grinned.
De las Torres did not grin. The other lieutenant took one look at that glowering countenance, shivered and applied himself to his tipple.
“Teniente Gregorio,” grated the captain from between clenched teeth, “has treated us all to the philosophy gleaned of his vast experience at soldiering. Just how long have you been in uniform, Teniente, all of six months? Eight? An entire year!
“Know you this, you pompous puppy, the man you name ‘pig’ is, for all his recent gain of girth, more man than you likely will live to be. Juan Alvarez was fighting in Yucatán when you knew not enough to wipe the milk — in which, I piss! — of your mother from your mouth.”
The young fop knocked over his chair, stood on his spread feet, his hand upon his saberhilt, his face crimson. “I . . . I’ll not take such from lowborn scum like you, de las Torres. Draw your blade!”
A lazy smile on his lips, de las Torres arose and lifted the baldric supporting his scabbarded broadsword over his head. “Teniente Patricio, your saber, por favor. My good sword is both longer and heavier than most sabers, and I would not have men say that I took unfair advantage of our exquisite and hot-tempered young compañero. So, take you my weapon in exchange, and bar and guard the door.”
De las Torres took the hilt of the saber in his big, horny hand, quickly found its balance and swung it experimentally a few times, then tested various areas of the keen edge on a calloused thumb, before releasing the hilt long enough to fit the saber-knot around his wrist with great care.
At this last, the impatiently waiting Gregorio barked a harsh, scornful laugh. “Dear Capitán, do you fear that your clumsy, peon’s paw will lose its grip?”
“Don’t try to teach your grandmother how to suck eggs,” muttered the captain, scuffing his bootsoles in the straw on the floor. Then, to Dons Maylo and Angel: “This is no concern of yours, señores. It is a matter of discipline in my command. And unless I miss my guess, it bears overtones of class conflict and personal animosity on the part of el rey de los maricónes, yonder.”
His face working with rage, the younger man stamped forward, his saber blade swept downward in a bluish blur; but the captain simply sidestepped and the edge rang on the stone-hard dirt floor. De las Torres could easily have slain the raging officer then, and all present knew it. All he did, however, was to sink less than an inch of blade into the teniente’s flat buttock.
“Puppy, mine,” he laughed, “mastery of the light sword does not automatically confer mastery of the saber or the broadsword, you know.”
Hurling his blade about in a wide swing at his tormentor, the young man swayed, off balance, when that rage-driven swing again failed to connect. And, again, his opponent deliberately passed up a chance to end the duel in a permanent and deadly manner, only pricking the teniente’s other buttock.
“Baseborn peon coward!” snarled the young hidalgo. “Why do you run away? A gentleman or a real man of any kind would stand and fight, blade to blade.”
The captain only smiled his infuriating smile of condescension. “What would you know of fighting, puppy? By the way you handle yours, one unknowing would think a saber was used for sickling grain or chopping wood.”
Recovering his balance at last, the slender youth stamped forward and lunged at the captain’s lower belly and crotch. The middle-aged officer, still smiling, sidestepped yet again and, rather than sinking his blade into the exposed body, flicked a quarter-inch off the top rim of an ear with a twist of the wrist.
“Nor, puppy, is the saber used for spearing fish,” he admonished, in such tone as might be used to a backward child. Then, more conversationally, “To allow your anger to surface in a sword fight — or in any other
kind of fight, for that matter — is to drive reason and elementary caution from the mind . . . usually, just a few moments before life leaves the body.”
All at once, the teniente made as if to thrust again, then abruptly changed the movement to a backhanded upward slash at the captain’s chin and throat. For the first time, their two blades met in a ringing clangor as de las Torres beat down the opposing saber.
His smile was no longer mocking and his voice not quite so bantering. “Now, Gregorio, that was better. You’re beginning to let your mind fight, as well as your body.” He did not pink his foe, this time.
For ten minutes more, the captain parried increasingly shrewd lunges, thrusts and cuts and slashes, always on the defensive, never using his obvious opportunities to maim or kill the younger man.
Finally, when the teniente was panting, gasping, streaked and soaked with sweat, and his swordwork was become slower and less accurate, the captain put a quick end to it by sending the teniente’s blade flying out of the tired, slackened grip, to clatter into a corner. Teniente Gregorio, suddenly white as fresh curds, fumbled off bis soft, velvet cap with one trembling hand while signing himself with the other, then he stood immobile, his lips moving in his final prayers and his eyes fixed upon the gleaming blade in his captain’s hand.
The captain grinned. “Now, young sir, you can appreciate the value of the saber-knot, eh? But stop troubling the saints, Gregorio, I have no intention of killing you today.”
“But . . . I would’ve meant to . . . kill . . . you . . . Capitán,” panted the junior officer.
The smile became gentle. “There never was any danger of that, lad. I was a saber-master before you were born. You see, even we campesinos can master the sword it you take us early enough and give us good, patient teachers.”