Aztec Autumn

by Gary Jennings

  Another grumbled, “What is the world coming to? Men should all be one color. Our color.”

  And another cautioned, “How can we know if the degenerate Desert People spoke truly? Had they been Yaki, now, they would have taken scalps to prove the existence of such beings.”

  And he was reminded by another, “We have never seen scalps of the evil chapayekém, but we know they exist. And they are of no color at all.”

  And the fifth, the elder in charge of warfare, said, “I believe it would do our yoem’sontéom good to fight someone besides their own relatives for a change. I vote that we lend them to this outlander.”

  “I concur,” said the elder in charge of the village work. “If this outlander speaks truly about the rapacity of the white men, we may someday not have any relatives to fight, anyway.”

  “I agree,” said the Leader of the Dances. “Let us keep here only the Deer Dancer and enough other dancers to satisfy Old Man and Our Mother.”

  “And to repulse the chapéyekám,” said the Keeper of the Customs.

  “Surely all others of our color,” said the elder who governed religion, “will wish to join in annihilating those of different color. I vote that we invite our cousins the Ópata and Kéhita to participate.”

  The warfare elder spoke up again. “And why not our cousins the To’ono O’otam as well? This would be the grandest-ever alliance of relatives. Yes, that is what we will do.”

  So it was arranged. Bakóm would send a warrior “bearing the staff of truce” to relay my message to all the others of the Eight Sacred Towns, and a second messenger to the faroff Desert People. I promised two things in return for such generous cooperation. I would appoint one of my own warriors to lead all the Yaki men south to our gathering place at Chicomóztotl, and the other to wait here in Bakóm to guide the Desert People’s warriors when they came. I would also, when all those yoem’sontaom got to Chicomóztotl, equip them with obsidian weapons far superior to theirs of flint. The elders accepted my offer of guides, but indignantly rejected the offer of weapons. What had been good enough for Old Man, and for their every male ancestor since, was good enough for modern warfare, they said, and I prudently did not argue the matter.

  I was glad we had reached agreement when we did, for thereafter I was deprived of my means of communicating with the Yaki. G’nda Ké claimed to be feeling ever more ill, and incapable of even the exertion of interpreting. Indeed, she looked ill, her complexion having faded almost to the pallor of a white woman, so that her freckles were her most visible feature. When even the elder in charge of work, and the women who had worked her so hard, allotted her a domed hut of her own in which to lie and rest, it seemed they had decided—since she was not about to give birth—that she must be about to die. But I, knowing G’nda Ké, dismissed that notion. I was sure that her prostration was just another of her ruses, doubtless her way of expressing her vexation at my having been more cordially accepted by her own people than she had been.

  XXIV

  WHILE WE WAITED for the men of the other Yaki branches to assemble, Machíhuiz, Acocótli and I occupied our time in doing a sort of training of the Mayo warriors of Bakóm. That is to say, we mock-fought against them with our swords and javelins of obsidian edges and points, so that they would learn to parry such assaults with their primitive weapons. It was not that I expected the Yaki ever to be battling against the men of my own army. But I was fairly certain that when my army fully engaged the Spaniards, they would add to their ranks many of their native allies, such as the Texcaltéca who had helped the white men in their longago overthrow of Tenochtítlan. And those allies would not be carrying arcabuces, but obsidian-bladed maquáhuime and spears and javelins and arrows.

  It was rather a slow and awkward process, training these yoem’sontéom without someone to translate my commands and instructions and advice. But warriors of every race and nation, probably even the white ones, share an instinctive understanding of each other’s movements and gestures. So the Mayo men had not too much trouble learning our Aztéca arts of thrusts and slashes and feints and withdrawals. They learned so well, in fact, that I and my two companions frequently got bruised by their dense-wood war clubs and pricked or scratched by their triple-flint spears. Well, of course, we three gave as good as we got, so I kept the Tícitl Ualíztli always in attendance at our training sessions, to apply his arts when necessary. And I gave no thought whatever to the absent G’nda Ké until, one day, a Bakóm woman came and timidly tugged at my arm.

  She led me—and Ualíztli came along—to the little cane hut that had been lent to G’nda Ké. I went in first, but what I saw made me instantly back out and motion for the tícitl to enter instead. Clearly, G’nda Ké had not been pretending; she appeared to be as near dying as the villagers had earlier supposed.

  She lay stretched out naked on a reed pallet, and she was copiously sweating, and she had somehow got extremely fat, not just in the places where well-fed women often do, but all over—nose, lips, fingers, toes. Even her eyelids had become so fat that they practically closed her eyes. As she once had told me, G’nda Ké was freckled over her whole body, and now, with that body so bloated, her countless freckles were so large and distinct that she might have grown a jaguar’s skin. In my one brief glance, I had seen the Mayo tícitl squatting beside her. I never yet had glimpsed that man’s face, but even the grim-visaged mask he wore seemed now to have a puzzled and helpless expression, and he was only listlessly shaking his curative wooden rattle.

  Ualíztli emerged from the hut, looking rather perplexed himself, and I asked him, “What could they possibly have been feeding her, to make her so grossly fat? In this Yaki land, I have never seen a woman more than meagerly fed.”

  “She has not grown fat, Tenamáxtzin,” he said. “She is swollen with putrid fluids.”

  I exclaimed, “A simple spider bite could have done that?”

  He gave me a sidelong look. “She says it was you, my lord, who bit her.”

  “What?!”

  “She is in excruciating agony. And much as we all have loathed the woman, I am sure you would wish to be a little merciful If you will tell me what kind of poison you applied to your teeth, I might be able to give her a more easeful death.”

  “By all the gods!” I raged. “I have long known that G’nda Ké is criminally insane, but are you?”

  He quailed away from me, stammering, “Th-there is a horribly gaping and suppurating sore on her ankle…”

  Through gritted teeth I said, “I grant you, I have often contemplated how I might most ingeniously slay G’nda Ké, when she was of no more use to me. But bite her to death? In your wildest imaginings, man, can you credit that I would put my mouth to that reptile? If ever I did that, / would be the one poisoned and suffering and suppurating and dying! It was a spider that bit her. While she was gathering wood. Ask any of the drabs who first attended her.”

  I started to reach for the Mayo woman who had fetched us, and who was goggling at us in fright. But I desisted, realizing that she could neither comprehend nor answer a question. I simply flailed my arms in futile disgust, while Ualíztli said placatively:

  “Yes, yes, Tenamáxtzin. A spider. I believe you. I should have known that the witch-woman would lie most atrociously, even on her deathbed.”

  I took several deep breaths to calm myself, then said, “She doubtless hopes that the accusation will reach the ears of the yo’otuí. Worthless though they hold every woman, this one is a Mayo. If they give heed to her perjury, they might vengefully refuse me the support they have promised. Let her die.”

  “Best she the quickly, too,” he said, and went again into the hut I suppressed several different kinds of repulsion, and followed him inside, only to be further repulsed by the sight of her and—I noticed now—the rotting-meat stench of her.

  Ualíztli knelt beside the pallet and asked, “The spider that bit you—was it one of the huge, hairy sort?”

  She shook her fat and mottled head, pointed a fat
finger at me, and croaked, “Him.” Even the Mayo tícitl’s wooden mask wagged skeptically at that.

  “Then tell me where you hurt,” said Ualíztli.

  “All of G’nda Ké,” she mumbled.

  “And where do you hurt worst?”

  “Belly,” she mumbled and, just then, a spasm of pain must have stricken her there. She grimaced, shrieked, flung herself onto her side and doubled over—or as far as she could, her distended stomach folding into fat rolls.

  Ualíztli waited until the spasm passed, then said, “This is very important, my lady. Do the soles of your feet hurt?”

  She had not recovered sufficiently to speak, but her bulbous head nodded most emphatically.

  “Ah,” said Ualíztli with satisfaction, and stood up.

  I said, marveling, “That told you something? The soles of herfeet?”

  “Yes. That pain is the distinctive sign diagnostic of the bite of one particular spider. We seldom encounter the creature in our lands to the south. We are more familiar with the big, hairy one that looks more fearsome than it really is. But in these northerly climes there is found a truly lethal spider that is not large and does not look especially dangerous. It is black, with a red mark on its underside.”

  “Your breadth of knowledge astounds me, Ualíztli.”

  “One tries to keep well informed in one’s trade,” he said modestly, “by exchanging bits of lore with other tíciltin. I am told that the venom of this black northern spider actually melts the flesh of its prey, to make it the more easily eaten. Hence that ghastly open sore on the woman’s leg. But, in this case, the process has spread within her whole body. She is literally liquefying inside. Curious. I would not have expected such extensive putrefaction except in an infant or a person old and infirm.”

  “And what will you do about it?”

  “Hasten the process,” Ualíztli murmured, so that only I might hear.

  G’nda Ké’s eyes, from between their puffed lids, were anxiously asking also: What is to be done for me? So Ualíztli said aloud, “I shall bring special medicaments,” and left the hut.

  I stood gazing down at the woman, not pityingly. She had regained breath enough to speak, but her words were disjointed, her voice only croaks and rasps:

  “G’nda Ké must not… the here.”

  “Here as well as anywhere,” I said coldly. “It appears that your tonáli has brought you to the end of your roads and your days, right here. The gods are far more inventive than I could possibly be, in devising the proper disposal of one who has lived ever evilly, and already lived too long.”

  She said again, but stressing one word, “G’nda Ké must not… the here. Among these louts.”

  I shrugged. “They are your own louts. This is your own land. It was a spider native to this land that poisoned you. I think it fitting that you should have been felled not by an angry human’s hand, but by one of the tiniest creatures inhabiting the earth.”

  “G’nda Ké must not… the here,” she said yet again, though it seemed she spoke more to herself than to me. “G’nda Ké will not… be remembered here. G’nda Ké was meant… to be remembered. G’nda Ké was meant… somewhere … to be royalty. With the -tzin to her name …”

  “You are mistaken. You forget that I have known women who deserved the -tzin. But you—to the very last, you have striven to make your marie on the world only by doing harm. And for all your grandiose ideas of your own importance, for all your lies and duplicities and iniquities, you were destined by your tonáli to be nothing more than what you were and what you are now. As venomous as the spider and, inside, just as small.”

  Ualíztli returned then, and knelt to sprinkle plain picíetl into her leg’s open sore. “This will numb the local pain, my lady. And here, drink this.” He held a gourd dipper to her protuberant lips. “It will stop your feeling the other pains within.”

  When he rose again to stand beside me, I growled, “I did not give you permission to relieve her agony. She inflicted enough on other people.”

  “I did not ask your permission, Tenamáxtzin, and I will not ask your pardon. I am a tícitl. My allegiance to my calling takes precedence even over my loyalty to your lordship. No tícitl can prevent death, but he can refuse to prolong it. The woman will sleep and, sleeping, die.”

  So I held my tongue, and we watched as G’nda Ké’s swollen eyelids closed. What happened next I know surprised Ualíztli as much as it did myself and the other tícitl.

  From the hole in G’nda Ké’s leg began to trickle a liquid—not blood—a liquid as clear and thin as water. Then came fluids more viscous but still colorless, as malodorous as the sore. The trickle became a flow, ever more fetid, and those same noxious substances started issuing from her mouth, too; and from her ears and from the orifices between her legs.

  The bloat of her body slowly but visibly diminished, and as the taut-stretched skin subsided, so did the jaguar spots of it shrink to a profusion of ordinary freckles. Then even they commenced to disappear as the skin slackened into furrows and creases and puckers. The flow of fluids increased to a gush, some of it soaking into the earthen floor, some of it remaining as a thick slime from which we three watchers stepped warily well away.

  G’nda Ké’s face collapsed until it was just a featureless, wrinkled skin shrouding her skull, and then all her hair wisped away from it. The leakage of fluids lessened to an ooze, and finally the whole bag of skin that had been a woman was empty. When that bag began to split and shred and slip downward and dissolve into the slime on the ground, the masked tícitl gave a howl of pure horror and bolted from the hut.

  Ualíztli and I continued to stare until there was nothing to be seen but G’nda Ké’s slime-glistening, gray-white skeleton, some hanks of hair, a scatter of fingernails and toenails. Then we stared at one another.

  “She wanted to be remembered.” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “She will certainly be remembered by that Mayo in the mask. What in the name of Huitztli was that potion you gave her to drink?”

  In a voice about as shaky as mine, Ualíztli said, “This was not my doing. Or the spider’s. It is a thing even more prodigious than what happened to that girl Pakápeti. I daresay no other tícitl has ever seen anything like this.”

  Stepping cautiously through the stinking and slippery puddle, he reached over and down to touch a rib of the skeleton. It instantly broke loose of its attachment there. He gingerly picked it up and regarded it, then came to show it to me.

  “But something like this,” he said, “I have seen before. Look.” Without any effort, he broke it between his fingers. “When the Mexíca warriors and workers came with your Uncle Mixtzin from Tenochtítlan, you may remember, they drained and dried the nastier swamps around Aztlan. In doing so, they dug up the fragments of numerous skeletons—of both humans and animals. The wisest tícitl of Aztlan was summoned. He examined the bones and declared them to be old, incredibly old, sheaves and sheaves of years old. He surmised that they were the remains of persons and animals sucked down in a quaking sand that had, at some time long forgotten, existed in that place. I got to know that tícitl before he died, and he still had some of the bones. They were as brittle and crumbly as this rib.”

  We both turned to look again at G’nda Ké’s skeleton, now quietly falling apart as it lay there, and Ualíztli said, in a voice of awe, “Neither I nor the spider put that woman to death. She had been dead, Tenamáxtzin, for sheaves of sheaves of years before you or I were born.”

  We emerged from the hut to see that Mayo tícitl dashing about the village and jabbering at the top of his voice. In his immense and supposed-to-be-dignified mask, he looked very foolish and the other Mayo were regarding him with incredulity. It occurred to me that if the whole village should get excited about the uncommon manner of G’nda Ké’s dissolution, the elders might still have reason for suspicion of me. I decided to remove all traces of the woman’s death. Let it be even more of a mystery, so the tícitl’s fantastic account would be u
nprovable. To Ualíztli I said:

  “You told me you carry something combustible in that sack.” He nodded and took out a leather pouch of liquid. “Splash it all on the hut.” Then, rather than go and take a brand from the cooking fire that stayed always alight in the middle of the village, I surreptitiously employed my burning-glass, and in moments the cane-and-reed hut was blazing. The people all stared in amazement at that—and Ualíztli and I pretended to do the same—as it and its contents burned to ashes.

  I may have ruined forever the local tícitl’s reputation for truthfulness, but the elders never summoned me to demand an explanation of those strange occurrences. And, during the next days, the warriors from other villages came straggling in from various directions, all well armed and appearing eager to get on with my war. When I was informed, by gestures, that I had collected every available man, I sent them south with Machíhuiz, and Acocótli went off northward with another Yaki, to spread the word among the Desert People.

  I had already decided that Ualíztli and I would not make the arduous mountain journey to Chicomóztotl, but would take an easier and quicker course. We left Bakóm and went west, along the river, through the villages of Torím, Vikam, Potém and so on—those names, in the unimaginative Yaki manner, meaning the “places of,” respectively, wood rats, arrow points, gophers and so on—until we came to the seaside village of Be’ene, “sloping place.” Under other circumstances, it would have been suicidal for two strangers to essay such a journey, but of course all the Yaki by now had been told who we were, and what we were doing in these lands, and that we had the sanction of the yo’otuí of Bakóm.

  As I have said, the Kéhita men of Be’ene do some fishing off that Western Sea shore. Since most of the men had gone off to enlist in my war, leaving only enough fishers to keep the village fed, there were a number of their seaworthy acáltin not being used. I was able, with gestures, to “borrow” one of those dugout canoes and two paddles for it. (I did not expect ever to return those things, and I did not.) Ualíztli and I stocked our craft with ample supplies of atóli, dried meats and fish, leather bags of fresh water, even one of the fishermen’s three-pronged cane spears, so we could procure fresh fish during our voyage, and a brownware pot full of charcoal over which to cook them.