Aztec a-1

by Gary Jennings

  "No, my lord. The wings of that fish spread sideways. As well as I can tell, this object appears to wear its wings sticking straight upward from its back. Or its roof."

  He pointed. "And those round dots in a row between the wings above and the roof below them. What do you make of those?"

  I said uncomfortably, "It is impossible to be certain from this crude drawing, but I venture the guess that the dots are meant to show the heads of men." Miserably, I raised my eyes from the paper, to look straight at each Speaker in turn. "My lords, I recant my former interpretation. I can only plead that I was inadequately informed. Had I seen this picture at that time, I would have said that the Maya were rightly frightened, and right to warn the rest of us. I would have said that Uluumil Kutz had been visited by immense canoes somehow moved by wings and filled with men. I could not say of what people the men are or whence they come, except that they are strangers and obviously have much knowledge. If they can build such war canoes, they can wage war—and perhaps a war more fearsome than we have ever known."

  "There!" said Nezahualpili, with satisfaction. "Even at the risk of displeasing his Lord Speaker, Mixtli flinches not from telling the truth as he sees it—when he sees it. My own seers and sayers read the same portent when they saw that Maya drawing."

  "Had the omens been read correctly and sooner," muttered Motecuzóma, "I would have had more than two years in which to fortify and man the coasts of Uluumil Kutz."

  "To what purpose?" Nezahualpili asked. "If the strangers do choose to strike there, let the expendable Maya bear the brunt. But if, as it seems, they can invade from the limitless sea, there are limitless coasts on which they might land, east or north, west or south. Not all the warriors of all nations could adequately man every vulnerable shore. You had better concentrate your defenses in a tighter ring and closer to home."

  "I?" Motecuzóma exclaimed. "What of you?"

  "Ah, I will be dead," said Nezahualpili, yawning and stretching luxuriously. "The seers assure me of that, and I am glad, for it gives me reason to spend my last years in peace and repose. From now until my death I shall make war no more. And neither will my son Black Flower when he succeeds to my throne."

  I stood before the dais uncomfortably, but apparently unnoticed and forgotten; I was given no signal of dismissal.

  Motecuzóma stared at Nezahualpili and his face darkened. "You are removing Texcóco and your Acolhua nation from The Triple Alliance? Lord friend, I should hate to speak the words betrayal and cowardice."

  "Then do not," snapped Nezahualpili. "I mean that we will—we must—reserve our warring for the invasion foretold. And when I say we, I mean all nations of these lands. We must no longer waste our warriors and our resources in fighting each other. The feuds and rivalries must be suspended, and all our energies, all our armies pooled together to repel the invader. That is how I see it, in the light of the omens and my wise men's interpretation of them. That is how I shall spend my remaining days, and Black Flower will do the same after me—working for a truce and solidarity among all nations, so that all may present a united front when the outlanders come."

  "All very well for you and your tamely disciplined Crown Prince," said Motecuzóma insultingly. "But we are the Mexíca! Ever since we attained our supremacy in The One World, no outsider has set foot inside this dominion without our permission. So it shall ever be, if we must fight alone against all nations known or unknown, if all our allies desert us or turn against us."

  I was a little sorry to see the Lord Nezahualpili take no umbrage at that outright expression of contempt. He said, almost sadly:

  "Then I will tell you of a legend, lord friend. Perhaps it has been forgotten by you Mexíca, but it still can be read in our Texcóco archives. According to that legend, when your Aztéca ancestors first ventured out of their northern homeland of Aztlan and made their years-long march which ended here, they knew not what obstacles they might encounter on the way. For all they knew, they might find lands so forbidding or peoples so unfriendly that they would deem it preferable to retrace their road and return to Aztlan. Against that contingency, they arranged for a swift and safe withdrawal. At eight or nine of the places they stopped between Aztlan and this lake district, they collected and hid ample stocks of weapons and provender. If they were forced to retreat homeward again, they could do it at their own pace, well nourished and well armed. Or they could turn and make a stand at any of those prepared positions."

  Motecuzóma gaped; clearly he had not heard that tale before. Well, neither had I. Nezahualpili concluded:

  "At least, so says the legend. Unhappily, it does not say where those eight or nine places are. I respectfully suggest, lord friend, that you send explorers northward through the desert lands to seek them out. Either that or lay out another line of stores. If you choose not to make every neighbor nation your ally now, the time will come when none will be, and you may have need of that escape route. We of the Acolhua prefer to gird ourselves with friends."

  Motecuzóma sat silent for a long while, hunched on his chair as if huddled against an approaching storm. Then he sat up straight, squared his shoulders, and said, "Suppose the outlanders never come. You will have lain supine to no purpose but to be trampled by whichever friend first feels strong enough."

  Nezahualpili shook his head and said, "The outlanders will come."

  "You seem very sure."

  "Sure enough to make a wager of it," said Nezahualpili, suddenly jovial. "I challenge you, lord friend. Let us play at tlachtli in the ceremonial court. No teams, just you against me. The best of three games, say. If I lose, I will take it as an omen contradicting every other. I will retract all my gloomy warnings and put all the Acolhua arms and armies and resources at your command. If you lose..."

  "Well?"

  "Concede only this. You will leave me and my Acolhua free from all your future entanglements, so that we may pass our last days in more peaceful and pleasant pursuits."

  Motecuzóma instantly said, "Agreed. The best of three games," and he smiled wickedly.

  He might well have smiled so, for he was not alone in thinking Nezahualpili mad to have challenged him to the games. Of course, no one else except myself—and I had been sworn to secrecy—knew at that time what the Revered Speaker of Texcóco had wagered on the outcome. So far as Tenochtítlan's citizens and visitors were concerned, the contest would be simply another entertainment for them, or an extra honor paid to Tlaloc, during the city's celebration of The Tree Is Raised. But it was no secret that Motecuzóma was at least twenty years younger than Nezahualpili, nor that tlachtli is a brutal game best played by the young, strong, and sturdy.

  All around and beyond the ball court's outer walls, The Heart of the One World was packed with people, nobles as well as commoners, squeezed shoulder to shoulder, though not one in a hundred of them could have hoped to see even a glimpse of the games. But when some bit of play made the favored spectators inside the court cry a praiseful "ayyo!" or groan "ayya!" or breathe a prayerful "hoo-oo-ooo," all the people in the plaza outside echoed and amplified the cheer or the lament or the owl hoot, without even knowing why.

  The steplike tiers of stone slanting upward from the court's marble inner walls were crowded with the very highest nobles of Tenochtítlan and those of Texcóco who had come with Nezahualpili. Possibly in compensation or bribe for my keeping their secret, the two Revered Speakers had allotted me one of the precious seats there. Though an Eagle Knight, I was the lowest-ranking person in that august company—excepting Nochipa, for whom I had arranged a place by perching her on my lap.

  "Watch and remember, Daughter," I said into her ear. "This is something never seen before. The two most notable and lordly men in all The One World, pitted one against the other, and in public show. Watch it and remember it all your life. You will never see such a spectacle again."

  "But, Father," she said, "that player wearing the blue helmet is an old man." She used her chin to point discreetly at Nezahualpili, who stood at
center court, a little apart from Motecuzóma and the high priest of Tlaloc, the priest in charge of all that month's ceremonies.

  I said, "Well, the player in the green head-protector is about my own age, so he is no spry juvenile either."

  "You sound as if you favor the old man."

  "I hope you will cheer for him when I do. I have wagered a small fortune on his winning."

  Nochipa swung sideways on my lap and leaned back to stare into my face. "Oh, you foolish Father. Why?"

  I said, "I do not really know." And I did not. "Now sit still. You are heavy enough without wriggling."

  Though my daughter had just then turned twelve years of age and had had her first bleeding, hence wore the garb of a woman, and was beginning to swell and curve prettily into woman's shape, she had not—I thanked the gods—inherited her father's size, or I could not have endured sitting between her and the hard stone seat.

  The priest of Tlaloc made special prayers and invocations and incense burnings—at tedious length—before he threw high the ball to declare the first game under way. I will not attempt, my lord scribes, to tell of the ball's every bound and bounce and rebound, for I know you are ignorant of the complex rules of tlachtli and could not begin to appreciate the finer points of the game. The priest scuttled from the court like a black beetle, leaving only Nezahualpili and Motecuzóma—and the two goalkeepers at either end of the court, but those men stayed immobile and unnoticed except when the progress of the game required them to move one goal yoke or another.

  Those things, the movable low arches through which the players had to try to put the ball, were not the simple half-circles of stone provided on ordinary courts. The goal yokes, like the court's vertical walls, were of finest marble and, like the winning-goal rings set high in the walls' center points, they were elaborately carved and polished and brilliantly colored. Even the ball had been specially braided for that contest, of strips of the liveliest óli, the overlapping strips colored alternately blue and green.

  Each of the Revered Speakers wore a padded leather band around his head and ears, secured by straps crossing the top of his head and under his chin; and heavy leather disks at elbows and knees; and a tightly wound, bulkily quilted loincloth, over which was belted a leather hip girdle. The head protectors were, as I have mentioned, of the two colors of Tlaloc—blue for Nezahualpili and green for Motecuzóma—but, even without that differentiation, even without my topaz, even I would have had no trouble distinguishing the two opponents. Between the paddings and quillings, Motecuzóma's body showed firm and smooth and muscular. Nezahualpili's was gaunt and ribby and stringy. Motecuzóma moved easily, springingly, lithe as óli himself, and the ball was his from the moment the priest tossed it up. Nezahualpili moved stiffly and awkwardly; it was pitiful to see him chase his fleet adversary, like Motecuzóma's shadow detached and trying to catch him up. A sharp elbow nudged my back; I turned to see the Lord Cuitlahuac, Motecuzóma's younger brother and commander of all the Mexíca armies. He grinned tauntingly at me; he was one of the several men with whom I had laid a sizable wager in gold.

  Motecuzóma ran, he leapt, he floated, he flew. Nezahualpili plodded and panted, his bald head gleaming with sweat under the straps of his headgear. The ball hurtled, it bounced, it flickered back and forth—but always from Motecuzóma to Motecuzóma. From one end of the court, he would hip it hard toward the wall where Nezahualpili stood indecisive, and Nezahualpili was never quick enough to intercept it, and the ball would angle off that wall toward the farther end of the court, and somehow, impossibly, Motecuzóma would be there to strike it again with elbow or knee or buttock. He sent the ball like an arrow through this goal yoke, like a javelin through that one, like a blowpipe pellet through the next, the ball going through every low arch without ever touching either side of the stone, every time scoring a goal against Nezahualpili, every time raising an ovation from every spectator except me, Nochipa, and Nezahualpili's courtiers.

  The first game to Motecuzóma. He bounded off the court like a young buck deer, untired, unwinded, to the handlers who rubbed him down and gave him a refreshing sip of chocolate, and he was standing, haughty, ready for the next game, when the trudging, sweat-dripping Nezahualpili had barely reached his resting seat among his own handlers. Nochipa turned and asked me, "Will we be poor, Father?" And the Lord Cuitlahuac overheard, and gave a great guffaw, but he laughed no more when the play resumed.

  Long afterward, veteran tlachtli players were still arguing various and contradictory explanations for what subsequently occurred. Some said it had simply taken the playing of the first game to limber Nezahualpili's joints and reflexes. Some said that Motecuzóma had rashly played the first game so strenuously that he prematurely tired himself. And there were many other theories, but I had my own. I knew Nezahualpili of old, and I had too often seen a similar rickety, hobbling, pathetic old man, a man the color of a cacao bean. I believe I saw, that day of the tlachtli contest, Nezahualpili's last pretense at that decrepitude when he mockingly gave away the first game to Motecuzóma.

  But no theory, including mine, can really account for the marvel that then occurred. Motecuzóma and Nezahualpili faced off for the second game, and Motecuzóma, having won the previous one, threw the ball into play. With his knee he lobbed it high in the air. It was the last time he ever touched that ball.

  Naturally, after what had gone before, almost everyone's eyes were on Motecuzóma, expecting him to flicker away that instant and be under the ball before his aged opponent could creak into motion. But Nochipa, for some reason, watched Nezahualpili, and it was her squeal of delight that brought every other spectator to his feet, everybody roaring-together like a volcano in eruption. The ball was jiggling merrily inside the marble ring high in the north wall of the court, as if pausing there long enough to be admired, and then it fell through on the side away from Nezahualpili, who had elbowed it up there.

  There was an uproar of exultation on the court and in the tiers, and it went on and on. Motecuzóma rushed to embrace his opponent in congratulation, and the goalkeepers and handlers milled about in a frenzy. The priest of Tlaloc came dancing and flaffing onto the court, waving his arms and raving, unheard in the din, probably proclaiming that to have been an augury of favor from Tlaloc. The cheering spectators jumped up and down in place. The bellow of "AYYO!" got even louder, ear-breakingly louder, when the crowd in the great plaza beyond the court heard the word of what had occurred. You will have gathered, reverend friars, that Nezahualpili had won that second game. Placing the ball through that vertical ring on the wall would have won it for him even if Motecuzóma had already been many goals ahead.

  But you must understand that such a ringed ball was almost as much of a thrill for the onlookers as for the man who ringed it. That was so rare an occurrence, so unbelievably rare, that I do not know how to tell you how rare it was. Imagine that you have a hard óli ball the size of your head, and a stone ring, its aperture of just slightly larger diameter than that of the ball, poised vertically and twice your height above you. Try putting that ball through that hole, using not your hands, using only your hips, knees, elbows, or buttocks. A man might stand for days, doing nothing else, uninterrupted and undistracted, and never do it. In the swift movement and confusion of a real game, its doing was a thing miraculous.

  While the crowd inside and outside the court continued its wild applause, Nezahualpili sipped at chocolate and smiled modestly, and Motecuzóma smiled approvingly. He could afford to smile, for he had only to take the remaining game to win the contest, and the ringed ball—albeit his opponent's doing—would ensure that the day of his victory would be remembered for all time, both in the archives of the sport and in the history of Tenochtítlan.

  It was remembered, the day is still remembered, but not joyously. When the tumult finally quieted, the two players faced off again, the throw to be Nezahualpili's. He kneed the ball into the air at an angle and, in the same movement, dashed away to where he knew it would descend, and th
ere kneed the ball again, and again with precision, up to and through the stone ring above. It happened so swiftly that I think Motecuzóma had no time to move at all. Even Nezahualpili appeared unbelieving of what he had done. That ringing of the ball twice in a row was more than a marvel, more than a record never to be matched in all the annals of the game, it was an accomplishment veritably stunning.

  Not a sound went up from the ranks of spectators. We scarcely moved, not even our eyes, which were fixed wonderingly on that Revered Speaker. Then a cautious murmuring began among the onlookers. Some of the nobles mumbled hopeful things: that Tlaloc had shown himself so mightily pleased with us as to have taken a hand in the games himself. Others growled suspicions: that Nezahualpili had ensorcelled the games by devious magic. The nobles from Texcóco disputed that accusation, but not loudly. No one seemed to care to speak in a loud voice. Even Cuitlahuac did not grumble audibly when he handed me a leather pouch heavy with gold dust. Nochipa regarded me solemnly, as if she suspected me of being secretly a seer of the outcome of things.

  Yes, I won a great deal of gold that day, through my intuition, or a trace of loyalty, or whatever undefinable motive had made me put my wagers on my onetime lord. But I would give all that gold, if I had it now—I would give more than that, ayya, a thousand of thousand times more than that, if I had it—not to have won that day.

  Oh, no, lord scribes, not just because Nezahualpili's victory validated his predictions of an invasion sometime to come from the sea. I already believed in the likelihood of that; the Maya's crude drawing had convinced me. No, the reason I so bitterly regret Nezahualpili's having won the contest is that it brought a more immediate tragedy, and upon no one but me and mine.

  I was in trouble again almost as soon as Motecuzóma, in I a furious temper, stalked off the court. For somehow, by the time the people had emptied out of the seats and the plaza that day, they had all learned that the contest had involved more than the two Revered Speakers—that it had been a trial of strength between their respective seers and sayers. All realized that Nezahualpili's victory lent credence to his doomful prophecies, and knew what those prophecies were. Probably one of Nezahualpili's courtiers made those things known, while trying to quell the rumors that his lord had won the games by sorcery. All I know for certain, though, is that the truth got out, and it was not my doing.