Aztec a-1

by Gary Jennings

  "If it was not your doing," said the icily irate Motecuzóma, "if you have done nothing to deserve punishment, then clearly I am not punishing you."

  Nezahualpili had just left Tenochtítlan, and two palace guards had almost forcibly brought me before the throne, and the Revered Speaker had just told me what was in store for me.

  "But my lord commands me to lead a military expedition," I protested, flouting all the established throne-room protocol. "If that is not punishment, it is banishment, and I have done nothing—"

  He interrupted, "The command I give you, Eagle Knight Mixtli, is in the nature of an experiment. All the omens indicate that any invading hordes, if they come at all, will come from the south. It behooves us to strengthen our southern defenses. If your expedition is a success, I will send other knights leading other emigrant trains into those areas."

  "But, my lord," I persisted, "I know nothing at all about founding and fortifying a colony."

  He said, "Neither did I, until I was bidden to do exactly that, in the Xoconóchco, many years ago." I could not gainsay it; I had been somewhat responsible for it. He went on, "You will take some forty families, approximately two hundred men, women, and children. They are farm people for whom there is simply no available land to farm here in the middle of The One World. You will establish your emigrants on new land to the south, and see that they build a decent village, and arrange its defenses. Here is the place I have chosen."

  The map he showed me was one I had drawn for him myself, but the area to which he pointed was empty of detail, for I had never yet visited there.

  I said, "My Lord Speaker, that spot is within the lands of the Teohuacana people. They also may resent being invaded by a horde of foreigners."

  With a humorless smile he said, "Your old friend Nezahualpili advised us to make friends of all our neighbors, did he not? One of your jobs will be to convince the Teohuacana that you come as a good friend and staunch defender of their country as well as ours."

  "Yes, my lord," I said unhappily.

  "The Revered Speaker Chimalpopoca of Tlecopan is kindly providing your military escort. You will command a detachment of forty of his Tecpanéca soldiers."

  "Not even Mexíca?" I blurted in dismay. "My Lord Motecuzóma, a troop of Tecpanéca are sure to be unruly under the command of one Mexícatl knight!"

  He knew it as well as I; it was part of his malice, part of my punishment for having been a friend of Nezahualpili. Blandly, he went on:

  "The warriors will provide protection on the journey into Teohuacan, and will stay to man the stronghold you are to build there. You will also stay, Knight Mixtli, until all the families are well settled and self-supporting. That settlement you will name simply Yanquitlan, The New Place."

  I ventured to ask, "May I at least recruit a few good Mexíca veterans, my lord, to be my under-officers?" He would probably have said an immediate no, but I added, "Some old men I know, who were long ago discharged as over-age."

  He sniffed contemptuously and said, "If it will make you feel safer to recruit additional warriors, you will pay them yourself."

  "Agreed, my lord," I said quickly. Eager to get away before he could change his mind, I dropped to kiss the earth, murmuring as I did so, "Has the Lord Speaker anything else to command?"

  "That you depart immediately and make all haste southward. The Tecpanéca warriors and the families of your train are being mustered now at Ixtapalápan. I want them in your new community of Yanquitlan in time to get their spring seeding in the ground. Be it done."

  "I go at once," I said, and shuffled on bare feet backward to the door.

  * * *

  Even though it was pure vindictiveness that made Motecuzóma fix on me as his pioneer colonizer, I could not complain overmuch, since it was I who had first urged the idea of such colonization—to Ahuítzotl, those many years earlier. Besides, to be honest, I had lately become rather bored with being the idle rich man; I had been haunting The House of Pochtéa, hoping to hear of some rare trading opportunity that would take me abroad. So I would have welcomed my assignment to lead the emigrant train, except that Motecuzóma insisted I stay with the new settlement until it was firmly rooted. As well as I could estimate, I would be immured in Yanquitlan for a full year, if not for two or more. When I was younger, when my roads and my days seemed limitless and countless, I would not have missed that much time subtracted from my life. But I was forty and two, and I begrudged the spending of even one of my remaining years tied to a dull job in a dull farm village, while perhaps brighter horizons beckoned all about.

  Nevertheless, I prepared for the expedition with all possible enthusiasm and organization. First I called together the women and servants of my household, and told them of the mission.

  "I am selfish enough not to want to be without my family during that year or more, and also I think the time can be used to advantage. Nochipa my daughter, you have never traveled farther from Tenochtítlan than the mainland beyond the causeways, and then only seldom. This journey may be rigorous but, if you would care to accompany me, I believe you would benefit by seeing and knowing more of these lands."

  "And you think I must be asked?" she exclaimed with delight, and clapped her hands. Then she sobered to say, "But what of my schooling, Father, at The House of Learning Manners?"

  "Simply tell your Mistress Teachers that you are going abroad. That your father guarantees you will learn more on the open road than inside any four walls." I turned to Béu Ribé. "I should like you to come too, Waiting Moon, if you would."

  "Yes," she said at once, her eyes bright. "I am glad, Záa, that you no longer wish to walk alone. If I can be—"

  "You can. A maiden of Nochipa's age should not go unattended by an older woman."

  "Oh," she said, the brightness leaving her eyes.

  "A company of soldiers and lower-class farm folk may be rude company. I should like you to stay always at Nochipa's side, and share her pallet every night."

  "Her pallet," Béu repeated.

  I said to the servants, "That will leave you, Turquoise and Star Singer, to occupy and care for the house and safeguard our belongings." They said they could and would, and promised that we would find everything in perfect order when we came back, however long we might be gone. I said I had no doubt of it. "And right now I have one errand for you, Star Singer."

  I sent him to summon the seven old warriors who had been my own small army on other expeditions. I was saddened but not much surprised when he returned to report that three of them had died since last I had required their services.

  The surviving four who did come had been fairly along in years when I first knew them as friends of Blood Glutton; they had not grown younger, but they came without hesitation. They came into my presence bravely, forcing themselves to walk with upright posture and sturdy tread, to divert my attention from their ropy musculature and knobby joints. They came booming with loud voices and laughs of anticipation, so the wrinkles and folds of their faces might have been taken to be only the lines of good humor. I did not insult them by remarking on their pretense at youth and vigor; their having come so gladly was proof enough to me that they were still capable men; I would have enlisted them even if they had arrived limping on sticks. I explained the mission to them all, then spoke directly to the oldest, Qualanqui, whose name meant Angry at Everybody:

  "Our Tecpanéca soldiers and the two hundred civilians are waiting at Ixtapalápan. Go there, friend Angry, and make sure they will be ready to march when we are. I suspect you will find them unprepared in many respects; they are not seasoned travelers. The rest of you men, go and purchase all the equipment and provisions we will need—the four of you, myself, my daughter, and my lady sister."

  I was more concerned with my emigrants' completing the long march than with any unfriendly reception we might meet in Teohuacan. Like the farm folk I was escorting, the Teohuacana were an agricultural people, and few in number, and not known for pugnacity. I fully expected that they would
even welcome my settlers, as new people to mingle with and marry their offspring to.

  When I speak of Teohuacin and the Teohuacana, I am of course using the Náhuatl names bestowed on them. The Teohuacana were actually some branch of the Mixteca, or Tya Nuü, and called themselves and their country Tya Nya. The land had never been besieged by us Mexíca or put under tribute to us because, except for farm products, its treasures were few. They consisted of hot mineral springs, not resources easily confiscated, and anyway the Tya Nya freely traded to us pots and flasks of the water from those springs. The water tasted and smelled awful, but it was much in demand as a tonic. And since physicians often ordered their patients to go to Tya Nya and bathe in those hot, stinking waters, the natives had also profited by building some rather luxurious inns adjacent to the springs. In sum, I did not expect much trouble from a nation of farmers and innkeepers.

  Angry at Everybody returned to me the next day to report, "You were right, Knight Mixtli. That band of rustic louts had brought all their kitchen grinding stones and images of all their favorite gods, instead of an equal weight of seed for planting and pinoli powder for traveling rations. There was much grumbling, but I made them discard every replaceable encumbrance."

  "And the people themselves, Qualanqui? Will they constitute a self-supporting community?"

  "I believe so. They are all farmers, but there are men among them who have also the skills of masons and brickmakers and carpenters and such. They complain of only one trade lacking. They are not provided with priests."

  I said sourly, "I never heard of a community which settled or grew anywhere, but that a plenitude of priests seemed to sprout from the ground, demanding to be fed and feared and revered." Nevertheless, I passed the word on to the palace, and our company was supplied with six or seven novice tlamacazque of various minor gods, priests so young and new that their black robes had hardly yet begun to be encrusted with blood and grime.

  Nochipa, Béu, and I crossed the causeway on the eve of our planned departure day, and spent the night in Ixtapalápan, so that I could call the train to order at first light, and introduce myself, and see that the tumplined loads were equitably divided among all the able-bodied men, women, and older children, and get us all early on the road. My four under-officers bawled the Tecpanéca troops to attention, and I closely inspected them, using my topaz. That caused some covert snickering in the ranks, and the soldiers thereafter referred to me among themselves—I was not supposed to be aware of it—as Mixteloxixtli, a rather clever blending of my name with other words. It would translate roughly as Urine Eye Mixtli.

  The civilians of the train probably called me by even less flattering names, for they had numerous grievances, of which the main one was that they had never intended or wanted to be emigrants at all. Motecuzóma had omitted to tell me that they had not volunteered for removal, but were "surplus population" rounded up by his troops. So they felt, with some justification, that they were being unfairly banished to the wilderness. And the soldiers were almost equally unhappy. They disliked their role of nursemaid, escort, and the making of a long march from their Tlácopan home, with their destination no honorable battlefield but an indefinite garrison duty. Had I not brought my four veterans to keep the troops in order, I fear that Commander Urine Eye would have had to cope with mutiny or desertion.

  Ah, well. Much of the time I was wishing I could desert. The soldiers at least knew how to march. The civilians lagged, they strayed, they got sorefooted and lame, they grumbled and whimpered. No two of them could ever pause to relieve themselves at the same time; the women demanded halts to breast feed their infants; the priest of this or that god had to stop at specified times of day to offer up a ritual prayer. If I set a smart marching pace, the lazier people complained that I was running them to death. If I slowed to accommodate the laggards, the others complained that they would die of old age before journey's end.

  The one thing that made the march pleasurable for me was my daughter Nochipa. Like her mother Zyanya, on her first trip far from home, Nochipa exclaimed joyously at each new vista revealed by each new turn in the road. There was no landscape so ordinary but that something in it gladdened her eye and heart. We were following the main trade road southeastward, and it is a route of much scenic beauty, but it was somewhat over-familiar to me and Béu and my under-officers—and the emigrants were incapable of exclaiming over anything but their miseries. But we could have been crossing the dead wastes of Mictlan, and Nochipa would have found it all new and wonderful.

  She sometimes would break into song, as birds do, for no seeming reason except that they are winged creatures, and happy to be so. (Like my sister Tzitzitlini, Nochipa had won many honors at her school for her talent at singing and dancing.) When she sang, even the most hateful malcontents among our company would cease their grumbling for a while, to listen. Also, when she was not too tired from the day's walking, Nochipa would lighten the dark nights by dancing for us after our evening meal. One of my old men knew how to play a clay flute, and had brought it along. On those nights Nochipa danced, the company would bend down on the hard ground with less lamentation than usual.

  Apart from Nochipa's brightening of the long and tiresome journey, I remember only one incident along the way that struck me as out of the ordinary. At one night's camping place, I walked some distance out of the firelight to relieve myself against a tree. Chancing to pass the tree again some while later, I saw Béu—she did not see me—and she was doing a singular thing. She was kneeling at the base of that same tree and scooping up the bit of mud made by my urination. I thought that perhaps she was preparing a soothing poultice for some marcher's blistered foot or sprained ankle. I did not interrupt her or later remark on the occurrence.

  But I should tell you, lord scribes, that among our people there were certain women, usually very old women—you call them witches—who had knowledge of certain secret arts. One of their capabilities was to make a crude little image of a man, using the mud from a place where he had recently urinated, and then, by subjecting that doll to certain indignities, to make the man himself suffer an unexplainable pain or illness or madness or lust or loss of memory or even loss of his possessions until he became impoverished. But I had no reason to suspect Waiting Moon of having been a witch all her life without my ever realizing it. I dismissed her collection of the mud that night as a mere coincidence, and forgot all about it until much later.

  Some twenty days' march out of Tenochtítlan—it would have been only twelve days for an experienced and unencumbered traveler—we came to the village of Huajuapan, which I knew of old. And, after spending the night there, we turned sharply northeastward on a lesser trade road that was new to all of us. The path led through pleasant valleys green with early spring verdure, winding among low and lovely blue mountains, toward Tya Nya's capital town, which was also called Tya Nya, or Teohuacan. But I did not take the entire train that far. After some four days along that route, we found ourselves in an extensive valley, at the ford of a wide but shallow stream. I knelt and took up a palmful of the water. I smelled it, then tasted it.

  Angry at Everybody came to stand beside me, and asked, "What do you think?"

  "Well, it does not spout from one of the typical Teohuacan springs," I said. "The water is not bitter or malodorous or hot. It will be good for drinking and for irrigation. The land looks to be good earth, and I see no other habitations or plantations. I think this is the place for our Yanquitlan. Tell them so."

  Qualanqui turned and bellowed for everyone to hear, "Set down your packs! We have arrived!"

  I said, "Let them rest for the remainder of today. Tomorrow we will begin—"

  "Tomorrow," interrupted one of the priests, suddenly at my elbow, "and the day after that, and the day after that, we will devote to the consecration of this ground. With your permission, of course."

  I said, "This is the first community I ever founded, young Lord Priest, and I am unacquainted with the formalities. By all means, do ever
ything that is required by the gods."

  Yes, I said those very words, not realizing how the words could be taken as my bestowal of unlimited religious license; not foreseeing the manner in which the words might eventually be interpreted by the priests and people; not remotely suspecting that I would, all my life long, regret that casual utterance.

  The initial ritual, the consecration of the local terrain, took three entire days of prayer and invocation and incense burning and the like. Some of the rites occupied only the priests, but others required the participation of all of us. I did not mind, for the soldiers and settlers alike were enlivened by the days of rest and diversion. Even Nochipa and Béu were obviously glad that the ceremonies gave them reason to dress in clothes more rich and feminine and ornamental than the traveling garb they had worn for so long.

  And that gave some of the colonists another diversion—me too, since it amused me to watch it. Most of the men of the train had wives and families, but there were three or four widowers with children but no wives, and those took the opportunity of the consecration days to pay court to Béu, one after another. There were also, among the males of the train, boys and young men of an age to make awkward approaches to Nochipa. I could not blame them, young men or older ones, for Nochipa and Béu were infinitely more beautiful and refined and desirable than the squatly built, coarse-featured, paddle-footed farm women and girls of the company.

  Béu Ribé, when she thought I was not watching, would haughtily repulse the men who came asking that she be their partner in one of the ceremonial dances, or inventing any other excuse to be near her. But sometimes, when she knew I was nearby, she would let the oaf stand there while she flirted and teased outrageously, her smile and eyes so warm that they made the wretch begin to sweat. She was clearly trying just to taunt me by making me realize anew that she was still an attractive woman. I did not have to be reminded; Waiting Moon was indeed as lovely of face and body as Zyanya had been; but I, unlike the farmers fawning on her, had long been inured to her spiteful wiles of first temptation then rejection. I merely beamed and nodded, like a benevolently approving brother, and her eyes would go from warm to cold, her voice from sweet to corrosive, and the suddenly spurned suitor would retreat in confusion.