War God: Return of the Plumed Serpent

by Graham Hancock

  The usual introductions began, Cortés affirming that he was a man, that he came from a land, Spain, that lay far away across the sea, that he served and worshipped the one true God, and that he was vassal to the greatest and most powerful king in all the world.

  Shikotenka, for his part, stated that he was a king and the son of a king, but that both he and his father ruled at the will of the people and the Senate of Tlascala, and could be removed from office and replaced at any time if they did not serve well. In his capacity as battle-king, he said, he was solely responsible for the decision to make war on the Spaniards, whom he had considered to be enemies as they came to his land from Xocotlan, and with a force of Totonacs, who were the allies and vassals of that tyrant and bully, Moctezuma. Above all, he said, he was a man who loved his country and he had fought Cortés not out of malice or wickedness but because he wished to preserve the independence Tlascala had maintained throughout centuries of wars. ‘Be not astonished,’ he said, ‘that we have never desired an emperor, have never obeyed anybody, and dearly love liberty, for we and our ancestors have endured great evils rather than accept the yoke of Moctezuma and the Mexica.’

  ‘And now?’ Cortés asked. ‘What is to happen now between you and us?’

  ‘You have not conquered us,’ said Shikotenka, ‘yet you have defeated us in many battles and have proved yourselves strong and invincible. Though we sent all our men to attack you and employed all our strength by night and day, we had no luck against you. Therefore our Senate has voted and the decision is made. We will have peace with you, we will become vassals to your king in his far-off land, and we promise to obey you and to serve you if you admit us to your alliance. In return we trust and require your assurance that you will respect our liberty and treat us and our women with dignity, and cease to destroy our houses and fields, and that if we are attacked you will come to our aid.’

  ‘And your army?’ Cortés said. ‘Why is it here armed for war when you seek peace?’

  Shikotenka seemed in the grip of some powerful emotion, and there were tears in his eyes – the tears of a brave soldier humbled. ‘My army is here for you to command,’ he said simply. He dropped to one knee and, behind him, in silence, a hundred thousand men followed suit.

  To his surprise, Cortés found that he, too, had begun to weep. ‘I’ll not have you kneel to me,’ he said, and he reached for Shikotenka’s hand and raised him up.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Tuesday 7 September 1519 to Thursday 9 September 1519

  ‘Where are they?’

  Tozi stood before him, dusty and sweat-stained, as though from a long journey, lean, sunburned and strong. Yes, definitely, a new strength about her! Huicton did not know yet what had befallen her after he’d last seen her at Teotihuacan on the day of the summer solstice, but whatever it was seemed to have filled her with fresh resolve, restored her self-confidence and revived her courage.

  ‘Where are who, my dear?’ he asked. Taking advantage of a lull in the flow of pedestrians passing him by, Tozi had materialised right in front of him as he sat on his begging mat on the south side of the city near the entrance to the Iztapalapa causeway. It was not his usual place, but he was here to observe the comings and goings of the spies who Moctezuma sent out daily to risk their lives in Tlascala following the progress of the Spaniards. The Great Speaker was in a state of abject terror about the white men he believed to be gods, and reports from Huicton’s own network left little doubt why. Although massively outnumbered, Cortés’s army had inflicted a series of bitter defeats on the Tlascalans, and in recent days had added to what must be a very painful experience for Shikotenka by massacring the populations of several towns and villages. Huicton had it on good authority that the Tlascalan Senate was about to order the battle-king to surrender – indeed, given the time it took for messages to go back and forth, he thought it likely that the surrender had already occurred. If and when that happened, Cortés would be able to add the Tlascalan forces to his own and march on Tenochtitlan at the head of a vast army.

  Tozi stamped her foot: ‘I mean the tueles, of course. Where are they?’

  ‘They are in Tlascala, my fierce friend. Now come, embrace me, as friends should who have not seen one another in a very great while. After that you will first tell me what you’ve been up to all these many months—’

  ‘No, Huicton. This is urgent!’

  ‘Nothing is so urgent that it excuses bad manners. So you will tell this old man your story, Tozi, patiently, in as much detail as you can bear, and then I will tell you about your tueles.’

  She made a face and stooped to hug him. The child has become a woman, he thought as he held her in his arms. While she’d been away, though it would have meant nothing to her, she had passed her fifteenth birthday. He patted the rug beside him, and with obvious impatience she sat, folding her legs under her. ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘Very good. Now you may begin.’

  By the time they rolled up the begging mat in the late afternoon, Huicton had a good understanding of Tozi’s adventures and experiences, and she knew everything that he knew about the movements of the Spaniards up to their latest battles in Tlascala. Huicton had also confirmed the awful truth she’d learned at the fattening pens, although he himself had been aware for several months of the unfolding of Moctezuma’s insane plan, namely that ten thousand virgin girls were to be sacrificed to Hummingbird in honour of the war god’s birthday during the four days before the start of the month of Panquetzaliztli.

  ‘What you can do,’ he told Tozi, ‘what we can both do, is continue to undermine Moctezuma and help the Spaniards defeat him. Ishtlil has asked me to follow their progress, for he seeks an alliance with them, and I’ve learnt that everywhere they go they make an end to human sacrifice. Our best hope to save those ten thousand young girls will be to bring the Spanish soldiers into Tenochtitlan.’

  ‘They are not soldiers! They are tueles! They are Quetzalcoatl and his retinue.’

  ‘They are soldiers and I’ve told you before that the name of their leader is Cortés, not Quetzalcoatl. I’ve told you before he’s a human being, not a tuele. Even so, he detests human sacrifice just as Quetzalcoatl did, so maybe that god does work through him and his men. Such questions are of small importance, in my opinion, so long as they help us end the wicked reign of Moctezuma.’

  ‘Whether they’re soldiers or tueles, they should be here now to stop the sacrifices,’ said Tozi. ‘Why are they wasting time fighting a war in Tlascala?’

  Huicton frowned: ‘They went there in search of allies but that stubborn fool Shikotenka turned against them.’

  ‘And he’s slowed them down! They’re needed here. Needed urgently. If they don’t reach us before Panquetzaliztli, all those girls will die.’

  ‘Then we must pray they reach us in time,’ said Huicton. He was aware, even as he said the words, how calculating he was being – for he had a goal and a purpose that only Tozi could fulfil and this was the way he would lead her back to it.

  ‘I want to do more than pray!’

  Ah, he sighed inwardly. That’s my girl! ‘There is something you can do,’ he now said, ‘but it involves Acopol. Are you ready to face him again?’

  ‘It’s for that you sent me on my journey – to strengthen my powers so I could stand up to him.’ She paused, seeming to collect her thoughts, then said: ‘When I went away, Acopol was in Cholula. Is he still there?’

  ‘He’s still there and he’s spent these months working a terrible and wicked necromancy, a patient, cunning magic intended to trap and destroy the Spaniards when they enter that city.’

  ‘But will these Spaniards – I’m sorry, I can’t call them that! These tueles – will they even go to Cholula?’

  ‘Your friend Malinal has remained in contact with me through my messengers,’ said Huicton. ‘She says that Cortés will surely go to Cholula when he’s dealt with the Tlascalans.’

  ‘I remember you told me she’d become his lover.’


  ‘She has.’

  ‘Then she should know, I suppose.’

  ‘I believe she does know and that we would be wise, if we can, to try to neutralise Acopol. But he’s far beyond my reach, Tozi. Only you, with your powers, might be able to get to him. So I ask you again, do you think you are ready?’

  ‘I don’t know if I’m ready,’ Tozi said. ‘I honestly don’t know. But I do know I’m supposed to protect children, and if that means doing battle with Acopol again, then I’m willing to try.’

  ‘The last time we spoke of Acopol,’ Huicton reminded her, ‘you said his magic still guarded Moctezuma in his palace, even though Acopol himself was in Cholula.’

  ‘That’s right, I was hurt badly when I tried to enter. But at least I proved at Teotihuacan that Acopol’s magic wouldn’t protect Moctezuma outside the palace.’

  ‘Indeed so,’ Huicton chuckled, ‘and the result is that the Great Speaker has confined himself to his palace like a frightened rat ever since! So it seems to me now that the first way to test your powers is to see what happens when you try to penetrate the palace again. If the warding spells that Acopol put in place still harm you, as they did before, then to go to Cholula and confront the man himself would surely be a hundred times more harmful.’

  ‘But if I can get past the warding spells without being hurt?’

  ‘Then that has to mean your powers have strengthened and, if that is so, then perhaps you could risk an encounter with Acopol.’

  ‘And what would I do when I encounter him?’ Tozi asked.

  ‘Why, my dear,’ Huicton said, ‘you would do battle with him, of course, as you yourself have said. His powers come from the dark side of magic; your powers, I believe, come from the light. If you can overcome him, if you can foil his plans in Cholula, then you will render the greatest possible service to those ten thousand girls you seek to protect.’

  Even as he said it, Huicton hated himself, realising he might be sending Tozi to her death. At some level he hoped she would fail the test of the warding spells, in which case there would be no need to go any further.

  But if she did not fail … ?

  Well, if she did not fail, then desperate times called for desperate measures, and he knew that he must urge her onward to Cholula.

  * * *

  Tozi did not fail.

  Two nights later, after visiting poor little Miahuatl in the fattening pen again to strengthen her resolve, she crossed the great plaza and slipped invisibly into the palace.

  The warding spells were there! She could see them, smell them, feel them in the velvet darkness. They had shape and form, like murderous spiders lurking in corners, like filthy cockroaches scuttling underfoot, like killers on the loose, but it was child’s play for her to brush them aside – with a flick of her finger, with a wave of her hand; the gestures came naturally to her – and as she moved rapidly along the corridors and up the grand stairway that led to Moctezuma’s sleeping quarters, no spirit knives and no spirit razors attacked her, her head did not burst, her brain did not bleed.

  The heavily armed guards at the door saw nothing as she drifted past them and the door itself was no obstacle; it put up no more resistance to her invisible form than mist or a shower of rain.

  Then she was within the vast high-ceilinged chamber, slipping silent as air across the polished floor, coming in a moment to the great bed where Moctezuma lay slumbering. She heard him mutter some indistinct phrase and started back in surprise. His eyes were wide open, moving rapidly from side to side, the whites gleaming in the light from the waning moon filtering through gaps in the window shutters. And not only his eyes! His lips and his tongue were moving also and words, whispers, groans ushered forth from his mouth. Yet he did not seem conscious, either of her presence or of anything else in this world.

  What was this? Tozi looked around and found the answer. An open linen bag hung loose in Moctezuma’s limp hand. She reached out, making herself more substantial for a moment, took it and peered inside, seeing a few fragments of mushroom, sensing a bitter, earthy smell. The Great Speaker had been eating teonanácatl again, the flesh of the gods, his preferred means of communion with Hummingbird.

  The thought struck her: Is he talking to his god now? She replaced the bag, faded back into full invisibility again, studied him closely and that was when, in an almost blinding flash, the vision came to her. The same vision that he was seeing – she was sure of it!

  A vision of Cholula.

  Tozi had been to Quetzalcoatl’s city only once in her whole life when, years before, as a child of six, her mother had taken her there. Even so, she could not forget that immense pyramid, so huge people called it a man-made mountain, except now she observed it from above, looked down upon it as though flying like a bird and saw the sacred precinct that surrounded the pyramid, filled with fighting men. On one side were the tueles, those white-skinned soldiers Huicton called Spaniards, a tiny force, no more than a few hundred strong, and on the other, swarming all around them, filling the precinct from wall to wall, were countless thousands of Mexica warriors. As the fighting reached its climax, and the resistance of the tueles faltered and failed, she saw Moctezuma’s jaguar knights and eagle knights seize them and take them prisoner, trussing some in hammocks so they could not move, holding others like slaves at the end of long poles, with collars fastened tight round their necks, and leading them off towards Tenochtitlan for sacrifice.

  ‘Will it be so, lord?’ she heard Moctezuma mumble in his trance.

  ‘It will be so,’ another voice answered, a voice Tozi had heard before, deep and filled with such power it made her hair stand on end.

  There came a rumble of laughter that she knew Moctezuma did not hear, laughter that was intended only for her and, for a moment, just a fraction of an instant, Tozi saw Hummingbird again, looming over her like the shadow of death, and then he was gone.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Friday 10 September 1519 to Monday 11 October 1519

  ‘The Tlascalans, the men of Shikotenka, were completely annihilated. The tueles destroyed them. They trampled upon them. They blasted them with fire-serpents. They shot them with metal bolts. They pierced them with spears. Not just a few, but great numbers they destroyed.’

  It was following this crushing defeat on the battlefield, Moctezuma’s spies explained, as well as massacres in many of their towns and villages, that the Tlascalans had surrendered to the tueles and made an alliance with them. Now the white-skins were free to come against Tenochtitlan, not only with their own small but mysteriously deadly army, but also with tens of thousands of Tlascalan auxiliaries to support them.

  Moctezuma waited for the spies to complete their dismal and depressing report, then turned to Teudile, Cuitláhuac and Cacama, who he had summoned to join him in the audience chamber of his palace. ‘What is your counsel?’ he asked. He already had a plan but it amused him to toy with his three most senior advisers. ‘Should we march out, do you think, and bring these tueles to battle?’

  Teudile looked alarmed. ‘The Tlascalan is a brave warrior,’ he said, ‘but he was helpless against them; they scorned him as a mere nothing. They destroyed him with a look, with a glance of their eyes. If we bring them to battle, will we fare any better?’

  Teudile obviously did not think so.

  Cuitláhuac made a strangled, furious sound. ‘If Guatemoc was here with us,’ he said, ‘he would undoubtedly urge us to bring them to battle and to do so while they are still far from our city—’

  ‘Well he’s not here with us,’ snapped Moctezuma.

  ‘It’s moot anyway, my lord,’ soothed Cacama. ‘The tueles are in Tlascala, so they’re already very close. I say let’s make a virtue of necessity, allow them to come to Tenochtitlan as the legitimate embassy of a foreign king, and avoid battle with them if we can.’

  Moctezuma smirked. Usually such news as the spies had brought would have plunged him into despair. But his spirits were soaring! The fattening pens were filling up with
virgins to be sacrificed on Hummingbird’s birthday, and the god himself had deigned to appear to him in the night, showing him again the vision of Cholula that he had shown him once before in which the tueles were vanquished by his brave jaguar and eagle warriors, captured by them for sacrifice, some trussed in hammocks so they could not move, others led away like slaves at the end of long poles, with collars fastened tight round their necks. To see that vision for the second time was to be reminded of the clear strategy it outlined – that the tueles must be lured to Cholula where they would be defeated if they could be taken by surprise in the sacred precinct that Acopol had wrested from the god of peace with his magic and re-dedicated to Hummingbird. Ah, what joy to see that victory again! It had given Moctezuma hope, so much hope, that the prophecy of Quetzalcoatl’s return would indeed be reversed at Cholula, the ancient city of Quetzalcoatl himself! ‘It is fortunate,’ he said to his councillors with an indulgent chuckle, ‘since all three of you have different points of view and never agree on anything, that I have consulted with the god—’

  ‘With Hummingbird, lord?’ gasped Teudile.

  ‘Of course. Who else? I consulted with him in the night and he showed me again what we must do to be rid of the white-skins forever.’

  * * *

  Pepillo felt that he was living through a time of miracles and marvels straight out of the pages of Amadis. He had fought in a battle against worthy foes and bloodied his sword – and lived! – and his faithful hound Melchior had fought and lived too. There was no doubt now – for Malinal had witnessed it – that Santisteban was the one who had opened the door of the hut where Melchior was confined on the hill of Tzompach, and let the lurcher loose, unarmoured, to take his chances in the melee. So there was a strange, fated irony in the fact that Melchior and Pepillo had been in the forefront of the rescuers who had saved Santisteban’s life and the life of his cruel, twisted master, Vendabal. Pepillo was under no illusions that this would turn either of them into friends; more likely it would only serve to increase their enmity. He would have to be more on his guard than ever, just as Amadis, surrounded by adversaries, had ever been obliged to be watchful. But like Amadis, too, he resolved he would not allow himself to be tainted by hate or envy. Love, truth, chivalry, and a kind heart; these were the qualities that would remain when all else was dust.