Aztec Autumn

by Gary Jennings

  “Only enough soldiers to keep the peace,” said Uno. “Roundsmen and beadles and catchpoles and the like. They carry harquebuses and halberds, aye, but they are not real fighting men. Me and Miles only saw three besides us that even rode horses. No artillery nowhere. I would say the town thinks it is far enough deep inside New Spain that it runs no risk of besiegement.”

  “Maybe four thousand people all together,” said Dos. “Half of them Spanish, looking ftrking fat and oily and layabout, like.”

  “The other half are their slaves and drudges,” said Uno. “Pretty much mixed—indios and blacks and breeds.”

  “Thank you, señores,” I said. “I will take back the two saddled horses now. When we assault the town, I trust you will have the initiative to procure saddles of your own.”

  Then I sat and ruminated for a time, before I sent for Nochéztli, to tell him:

  “We shall need only a small part of our forces for this taking of Tonalá. First, I think, our Yaki warriors, because their sheer savagery will be most terrifying to the whites. In addition, we will employ all our men equipped with arcabuces, and all those Purémpe women armed with granadas, and a contingent of our best Aztéca warriors. The rest of our forces, the greater part, will remain encamped here, invisible to the townsfolk.”

  “And those of us attacking, Tenamáxtzin, do we attack all together?”

  “No, no. In advance of any attack whatever, send the women, carrying their granadas and snaking their poquíetin, sneaking at a prudent distance around the town, to lurk on the far side of it, well concealed. The assault will commence when I give the word, and then only the Yaki will attack—from this side of the town—rushing openly upon it and making as much bloodcurdling noise as they can. That will bring all the Spanish soldiers also to this edge of the town, thinking they are being raided only by some bare-breasted, cane-wielding small tribe that can be easily repelled. When the soldiers come running, our Yaki are to withdraw, as if fleeing in fright and consternation. Meanwhile, have every one of our thunder-stick warriors spread in a line, also on this side of the town, crouched in concealment. As soon as the Yaki have fled past them, and they have clear sight of the Spaniards, they are to rise and aim and discharge their weapons. That should strike down so many of the soldiers that the Yaki can turn again and finish off the survivors. At the same time, when the Purémpe women hear the thunder sounds, they are to run into the town from that far side and start hurling their granadas into every abode and building. Our force of Aztéca warriors—led by you and myself and our own two mounted white men—will follow the Yaki into the town, slaying the resident white men at will. How does that plan sound to you, Knight Nochéztli?”

  “Ingenious, my lord. Eminently workable. And enjoyable.”

  “Do you think that you and your under-officers can communicate those instructions so that everyone understands his and her part? Even the inarticulate Yaki?”

  “I believe so, Tenamáxtzin. The plan is not overly complicated. But it may take us some while to do all the necessary gesticulation and drawing of diagrams in the earth.”

  “There is no hurry. The town seems complacently snug in its security. So, to give you time to impart those various instructions, we will not make our assault until the dawn of the day after tomorrow. Now, two further instructions, Nochéztli—or, rather, restrictions. Some random and needless slaughter will be of course inevitable. However, insofar as possible, I want our warriors to kill only white men, to spare the white females and all the slaves, male or female, of whatever color.”

  Nochéztli looked slightly surprised. “You would leave living witnesses this time, my lord?”

  “The white women are to be left alive only long enough for our warriors to make free use of them. The customary reward for the victors. Those women probably will not survive that ordeal, but any that do will then be mercifully slain. As for the slaves, those who choose to join our ranks may do so. The others can remain and inherit the ruins of Tonalá, for all I care.”

  “But, Tenamáxtzin, as soon as we are gone again, they could scatter all over New Spain—any of them still loyal to their late masters—crying warning to all other Spaniards.”

  “Let them. They can give no accurate report of our number and strength. I had to slay those Kuanéhuata fisher people because—through the carelessness of our own scouts—they had glimpsed our full force. No one here in Tonalá will have seen more than a few of us.”

  “That is true. Have you anything else to command, my lord?”

  “Yes, one more thing. Tell the Purémpe women not to waste their granadas on the town’s two stone buildings, the church and the palace. Granadas could not cause much damage there. Besides, I have a reason for wanting to do the taking of those two structures myself. Now go. Begin the preparations.”

  The initial assault on Tonalá went as I had planned it, except for one brief balk, which I myself should have foreseen and made provision against. I and Nochéztli, Uno and Dos, sat our mounts on a small hillock with a good view of the town, and watched as the Yaki warriors swarmed into the slave-quarter outskirts at first dawn, shrieking inhuman war cries and ferociously flailing their war clubs and three-pronged spears. As I had commanded, they made more noise than ruination, killing only (as I would later learn) a few slave men who started up from sleep and, bravely but foolhardily trying to defend their families, threw themselves deliberately in the path of the Yaki.

  As I had expected, the Spanish soldiers came running—some galloping on horseback—from their garrison palace and their various posts, to converge at the scene of action. Some of them were still awkwardly putting on their armor as they came, but they all came armed. And, still doing as I had commanded, the Yaki melted away before them, withdrawing onto the open ground this side of the town. But they pranced backward as they fled, facing the soldiers, yelling defiance, waving their weapons menacingly. That brash display cost some of them their lives, because the Spaniards, though taken unawares and unprepared, were soldiers, after all. They formed lines, knelt, took careful aim with their arcabuces and discharged them accurately enough to bring down several of the Yaki before the rest ceased their posturing and turned and ran to safety at a distance. That left a clear field for my own arcabuz men, and we saw them all—there were ninety and four of them—rise up from their concealment, take their several aims and at a word from their commanding knight, all discharge their weapons simultaneously.

  That was effective, indeed. A good number of the soldiers afoot went down, and a few others toppled from their saddles. Even at our distance, I could see the confused milling about of the astonished Spaniards who had survived that storm of lead. However, there now occurred the balk that I have mentioned. My arcabuz men had employed their weapons as efficiently as any Spanish soldiers could have done—but they had done so all together. And now, all together, they had to recharge those weapons. As I well knew, and should have taken into account, that process requires some time, even for the most adept and practiced man.

  The Spaniards had discharged their arcabuces not all together, but sporadically, as targets and opportunities afforded, hence most of them had weapons still charged. While my own arcabuz men stood unarmed—ramming the pólvora and wads and lead balls down the thunder-sticks’ tubes, priming the pans, rewinding the wheels’ locks, cocking the cat’s-paws—the Spaniards regained enough composure and discipline to resume their sporadic but deadly discharging. Many of my arcabuz men were struck, and almost all the others crouched low or flopped flat on the ground, in which positions their recharging of their weapons was further impeded and delayed.

  I cursed aloud in several languages and barked at Nochéztli, “Send the Yaki in again!”

  He made a sweeping gesture with his arm and the Yaki, who had been watching for that, swept anew past our line of now disconcerted arcabuz men. Having seen their fellows fall during the earlier foray, the Yaki went really vengefully this time, not even wasting their breath to shout war cries. More of them
fell to the Spanish lead as they went, but there were still many of them to plunge in among the Spaniards, viciously stabbing and clubbing.

  I was just about to give the order for us four mounted men to charge, with our Aztéca behind us, when Uno reached from his horse to clutch my shoulder and say, “Your pardon, John British, if I presume to give you a bit of advice.”

  “By Huitztli, man!” I snarled. “This is no time to—”

  He overrode me, “Best I do it now, Cap’n, while I have life to speak and you to hear.”

  “Get on, then! Say it!”

  “Me, I would not know one end of a harquebus from the other, but I have shipped along of His Majesty’s marine soldiers a time or two, and seen them in action. What I mean, they do not all fire at once, as your men did. They form up in three ranks, parallel. The first rank fires, then falls back while the second rank aims. The second rank fires and falls back while the third rank aims. By the time the third rank has fired, the first has reloaded and is ready to fire again.”

  There were goose words in that speech, but I readily comprehended the sense of it, and said:

  “I humbly ask your pardon, Señor Uno. Forgive my having snapped at you. The advice is sound—and welcome—and I will heed it ever after this day. I kiss the earth to that. Now, señores, Nochéztli…” I swept my sword arm to start the Aztéca running. “If you f’all, fall forward!”

  XXIX

  THE MOST MEMORABLE aspect of any battle—and, having now experienced many of them, I can say this with authority—is its dizzying commotion and confusion. But of this one, my first major engagement with the enemy, I do retain a few memories more distinct.

  As we four mounted men pounded across the open ground and into the affray, only a few stray lead balls flew harmlessly past us, because the Spanish soldiers were very much occupied with the Yaki among them. Then, as we new assailants also closed with them, I vividly remember the sounds of that encounter—not so much the clashing of arms, but the clamor of voices. I and Nochéztli and all the Aztéca who followed us were uttering the traditional cries of various wild animals. But the Spaniards were shouting the name of their war santo—”jPor Santiago!”—and, to my surprise, our own two white men, Uno and Dos, were apparently doing the same. They roared what sounded to me like this: “For Harry and Saint George!” though I had never, even in my Christian-schooling days, heard of any santos named Harry and George.

  There were other noises from the distance, from inside the town—some sharp as thunderclaps, others mere muted thumps—the burstings of the clay-ball granadas being employed by our women warriors. Doubtless the Spanish officers would have liked to detach some of their men from the struggle here at the town’s edge, and send them to deal with those inexplicable thunders. But they had no hope of doing that, because, right here, their men were by now outnumbered and fighting for their lives. Neither their fighting nor their lives lasted very long.

  If there are such beings as Saints Harry and George, they lent their followers greater strength of arm than Santiago did to his. Uno and Dos, though unsteadied by saddles and stirrups, slashed left and right from atop their mounts, as tirelessly, mercilessly and killingly as did I and Nochéztli. We four struck at the soldiers’ throats and faces, the only vulnerable places between their steel helmets and steel breastplates, and so did our Aztéca warriors wielding obsidian maquáhuime. The Yaki warriors, however, did not have to be so precise in their aim. In these close quarters, they had dropped their unwieldy long spears and were almost indiscriminately swinging their ironwood war clubs. A blow to an opponent’s head would dent his helmet deeply enough that his skull would cave in beneath k. A blow to an opponent’s body would so dent his breastplate that he would either the of crushed bones and organs or—more agonizingly—suffocate, his chest unable to expand to breathe.

  During all that turmoil, other people were dodging among us or scampering around us, in a panic to get out of the contested area, and many others could be seen, farther off, likewise fleeing from the town into the open country. None wore armor or uniform, and most were barely dressed, having leapt straight from their night’s pallets. They were the slave inhabitants of this quarter where we had chosen to strike—or most of them were. The tumult had of course wakened all of Tonató, so more than a few Spanish men, women and children, equally ill-clothed, were among the fugitives, obviously and unashamedly hoping to be mistaken for slaves themselves, and let to go free. But not many of those got away. We marauders allowed the passage of everyone of our own color, or darker, but every white-skinned person of whatever sex or age who came within our reach we instantly skewered or hacked or clubbed to death. To my regret, two of the Spaniards’ horses also got killed, inadvertently, and four or five others wandered skittishly about, riderless, wild-eyed, wide-nostriled, trying to snort away the smells of blood and pólvora smoke.

  When every last Spanish officer and soldier and pretended slave lay dead or dying, my three mounted comrades rode off into the streets of the town, the Aztéca warriors hooting and howling behind them. I stayed at the scene of this first combat for a brief while, partly to count our own fallen people. They were very few, compared to the Spanish losses. And the male slaves of our company who had been detailed as Swaddlers and Swallowers would shortly be arriving, either to bind up the wounds of any warriors who might be revived or to slip an easeful blade into those who were beyond the help of any tíciltin.

  But what mainly detained me at the scene was the fact that all the Yaki also were staying, every man of them vigorously sawing at the head of a Spanish corpse, usually using the belt knife that the soldier had worn when he was alive. After a warrior had cut a circle in the skin around the head, from nape of neck, above the ears and eyebrows, back to the nape, he had only to give a sudden, forceful tug, and the hair and scalp and forehead skin came ripping away, leaving the cadaver crowned with only a pulp of raw flesh that oozed blood. Then the Yaki would dash away to another and do the same. However, some of the fallen Spaniards were not yet quite corpses. Those could and did shriek or moan or convulse when the tug was given, and their heads’ exposed pulp bled profusely.

  Cursing vehemently, I edged my horse here and there among that carnage, swatting at the Yaki warriors with the flat of my sword and pointing townward with it, shouting orders. They flinched and grumbled in their unlovely language—I gathered that they were accustomed to collect enemy scalps while they were fresh and easy to cut loose. But I did my best to convey, with gestures, that there would be many more scalps, far more than enough to adorn every Yaki’s skirt, and I cursed some more, and urgently waved them onward. They went, still grumbling, and only slowly at first, but then running, as if it had suddenly occurred to them that others of our army might already be harvesting the finest-quality scalps of the townsfolk.

  It was not difficult for me to follow my men who had preceded me, for they seemed to have gone spreading havoc everywhere. Whatever street I took, whatever cross street I turned into, there lay corpses everywhere—half-clad, bloody, pierced or slashed or thoroughly mangled—sprawled on the street cobblestones or across their own homes’ thresholds. From some houses, the residents had not had time to flee, but I could tell that there were bodies inside, for much blood had flowed out the open doors. Only once in those ravaged streets did I come upon a living white person. A man wearing nothing but his underclothes, bleeding from a gash in his neck that had failed to kill him, came running up to me, ranting insanely. In his hands he held, by their hair, three severed heads: one a woman’s, the other two smaller. He could not have expected me to understand his Spanish, but what he shouted—over and over—was:

  ”These things were my wife and my sons!”

  I said nothing in reply, but kindly used my sword to send him to join them in whatever Christian afterworld they had gone to.

  In time, I caught up to my foot warriors, Yaki and Aztéca intermingled, scuttling in and out of houses or chasing runaways through streets and alleys. I was pleased
to see that they were obeying my instructions, or at least as well as I could have expected. Every Tonalá inhabitant of our own complexion, or darker, was being left unmolested. The Yaki were no longer wasting time in scalping, but were letting the dead bodies lie while they went to kill more. My instructions were being only slightly disregarded in one respect, and that was a matter of no great concern to me. I had ordered that the white females be let to live for a while, but the warriors were keeping—and herding before them—only the more comely women and young girls. Those, of course, were easy to discern, for few of them had been wearing much clothing at all, and now had been stripped naked. So the flabby or skinny or obese or wrinkled old women, and the children so young as to be indeterminate of sex, were being slaughtered along with their fathers and husbands and brothers and sons.

  My men no longer had breath to spare in uttering war cries, but were doing their selecting and butchering in silence. Of course, the victims were not silent. Every living white female loudly pleaded or prayed or screamed or cursed or wept; and so did the men and the old women and the children, as long as they could. Those same despairing noises came from every direction—and other noises, too: the splinterings of doors being forced; the occasional blast of an arcabuz owned by some householder, discharging its single futile pellet; the continuing random thunders and thuds, not far off now, of our Purémpe women’s granadas. And some heroically foolish person was even ringing a frantic, pathetic, far-too-late alarm on the town’s church bell.