Aztec Autumn

XIV

So I went on westward, stopping for at least a night in each village I came to, and then northward, eastward, southward, until I had circled the entire Lake of Rushes and come westward again to the very first village I had visited, San Marcos Churítzio, that one where Erasmo Mártir resided.

I found it to be true, what Padre Vasco had said, that the lakeside people all lived in amity and prosperity and conviviality, and were understandably content to live so. And they had indeed mastered the ancient crafts of the Purémpecha. One village produced hammered copperware: dishes and platters and pitchers of graceful design and dimpled finish. Another village produced similar utensils, but of a kind of pottery to be seen nowhere else, colored a lustrous black by an admixture of powdered lead in the clay. Another made the long-famous Purémpe lacquerware: trays, tables, huge folding screens, all of a rich, shiny black, inset with gold and many vivid colors. Another made mats and pallets and baskets of braided rushes from the lake; they were, I had to admit, even more elegant than those woven by my lost Citláli. Another village made intricate jewelry of silver wire; another did jewelry of amber; another with the pearly nacre of mussel shells. And so on and on around the lake. Between and about the villages were the tilled fields, growing the newcome sweet cane and a sweet grass called sorgo, as well as the more familiar crops like maize and beans. All the fields were bearing far more lushly than any known in former times, before our farmers had the advantages of Spanish-imported tools and ideas.

There was no denying that these Mexíca colonists had benefited hugely from their association with the Spaniards. I asked myself: did the virtues of their winsome Utopia, then, counterbalance the miseries and degradations being suffered by their fellow Mexíca in the abominable obrajes? I thought they did not, for the latter Mexíca numbered in the many thousands. No doubt there existed other white men like Padre Vasco de Quiroga, who took the word Christianity to mean "loving kindness." But I knew that any men of his kind were vastly outnumbered by the vicious, greedy, deceitful, coldhearted white men who likewise called themselves Christians and even priests.

At the time, I admit, I was being as deceitful as any white man. I was not, as Padre Vasco supposed, touring the villages of his Utopia just to assess or admire them; I was combing them for any inhabitants who might collaborate in my planned sedition. To every village smith who worked with metals, I showed my arcabuz and inquired whether he could make a copy of such a contrivance. They all, of course, recognized a thunder-stick—and made loud praise of the Mexícatl who had crafted mine. But all were unanimous in saying that even if they were inclined to imitate that talented artisan, they had not the necessary tools. And the replies I got when I asked all the men whether any would rally to me in rebellion against the Spanish oppressors could be summed up in the response I got from Erasmo Mártir, the last one I queried.

"No," he said flatly.

We were sitting together on the bench before his house door, where, this time, he was not shaping a woman-formed piece of guitarra. He went on:

"Do you take me for a raving tlahuéle? I am one of the fortunate few Mexíca who have ample food, secure shelter, freedom from any master's abuse, freedom to come and go as I please. I have even real prosperity and a promising future for my family."

Yet another man drained of manhood, I thought bitterly, "lamiendo el culo del patrón." I growled, "Is that all you desire to have, Erasmo?"

"All?! Are you tlahuéle, Juan Británico? What more could a man want in this world as it is today?"

"Today, you say. But there was a day when the Mexíca also had pride."

"Those who could afford to. The tlátoantin rulers, and those with the noble -tzin to their names, and the pípiltin upper classes and the cuáchitin knights and such. They were so proud, in fact, that they gave no thought to us macehuáltin commoners who fed and clothed and attended them. Except when they needed us on the battlefield."

I said, "Most of the cuáchitin of whom you speak were likewise mere macehuáltin, who rose from the common class to the knighthood because they fought the enemies of the Mexíca, and were proud to do so, and showed it in their prowess on the battlefield."

Erasmo shrugged. "I have here everything that any Mexícatl knight ever had, and I won it without fighting."

"You did not win it!" I snapped. "It was given to you."

He shrugged again. "If you like. But I work hard to be worthy of it and to keep it. And to show my gratitude to the good Padre Vasco."

"The padre is good and gracious, that is true. But do you not see, Cuatl Erasmo? He is degrading your Mexícatl manhood just as would a cruel, whip-wielding white master. He is treating all of you as if you were only domesticated wild beasts. Or drooling xolopítlin. Or swaddled infants."

This appeared to be Erasmo's day for shrugging. "Even the manliest man can appreciate being treated with tender solicitude." Now he sniffled, as if near to weeping. "The way a good wife treats a good husband."

I blinked. "What has wifeliness to do with—?"

"Hush. No more, please, Cuatl Juan. Come, walk with me. I would speak with you on something of a different nature."

Wondering, I went with him. When we were some distance from his house, I ventured to say, "You do not seem nearly so cheerful as when I last saw you, and that was not too long ago."

He sniffled again, and said gloomily, "That is certain. My head is bowed, my heart bleeds, my hands tremble so that my work suffers."

"Are you ill, Erasmo?"

"Best you address me by my pagan name—Ixtálatl—for I am no longer fit to be a Christian. I have sinned most irredeemably. I am... afflicted with cháhuacocolíztli." That long word means "the shameful disease caused by adultery." He went on, still sniffling, "Not only does my heart leak. So does my tepúli. For some time now, I have not dared to embrace my good wife, and she keeps plaintively asking why."

"Ayya," I murmured sympathetically. "Then you have lain with one of those importunate Purémpe women. Well, a tícitl of our own people—or probably even a Spanish médico—can alleviate the ailment. And any priest of our kindly goddess Tlazoltéotl can absolve you of the transgression."

"As a Christian convert, I cannot resort to the goddess Filth Eater."

"Then go and confess to Padre Vasco. He told me that the sin of adultery is not exactly unknown here in Utopia. Surely he has forgiven others, and has let them continue being Christians."

Erasmo muttered guiltily, "As a man, I am too ashamed to confess to the padre."

"Then why, may I ask, are you confessing to me?"

"Because she wants to meet you."

"Who?" I exclaimed, mystified. "Your wife?"

"No. The adulterous woman."

Now I was nonplussed. "Why in the name of all the gods should I consent to meet a slut of polluted tipíli?"

"She asked for you by name. By your pagan name. Tenamáxtli."

"It must be Pakápeti," I said, even more confounded, because if Tiptoe had been diseased when she and I so often and so enjoyably coupled, I too would be hurting and leaking by now. And there had hardly been time since then for some other male passerby to have—

"Her name is not Pakápeti," said Erasmo, and astounded me again by announcing, "Here she comes now."

This was too coincidental to be coincidence. The woman must have been observing our approach from some nearby hiding place, and now stepped forward to meet us. She was no one I had ever seen before, and I hoped I would never again see such a cold and gloating smile as she was smiling at me. Erasmo, speaking Náhuatl, not Poré, said without enthusiasm:

"Cuatl Tenamáxtli, this is G'nda Ké, who expressed a fervent wish to meet you."

I spoke no courteous salutation to her, saying only, "G'nda Ké is not a Purémpe name. And you have abundant hair on your head."

Clearly she understood Náhuatl, for she said, "G'nda Ké is Yaki," and gave a haughty toss of her dead-black mane.

Erasmo mumbled, "I must go. My wife..." and scampered back toward his home.

"If you are a Yaki," I said to the woman, "you are far from home."

"G'nda Ké has been many years away from that home."

That was the way she talked, not ever saying "I" or "me." She spoke always as if she were standing apart from her own physical presence. She appeared to be no older than myself, and she was fair of face and form; I could understand how easily she must have seduced Erasmo. But whether G'nda Ké smiled, frowned or wore no expression whatever, her visage never ceased to seem gloating. It implied that she possessed some private, secret, unclean bit of knowledge with which she could damage or even damn to Míctlan any person she chose. There was one other feature of her face that was only rarely seen among our people.

"You have a profusion of freckles," I said, not caring if I was being rude, because I supposed it was a manifestation of her detestable disease.

"G'nda Ké is freckled all over her body," she said with a gloating grin, as if inviting me to have a look.

I ignored that, and asked, "What brought you so far south from the Yaki lands? Are you on a quest of some sort?"

"Yes."

"What do you seek?"

"You."

I laughed, without humor. "I did not realize that my attractiveness had such a long reach. Anyway, you found Erasmo instead."

"Only to find you."

I laughed again. "Erasmo has good reason to wish you had never found him."

She said indifferently, "Erasmo does not matter. G'nda Ké hopes that he will convey the disease to every other Mexícatl here. They deserve the agony and the shame. They are as flabby and cowardly as their forebears who refused to leave Aztlan with me."

My memory stirred. And, I think, so did the roots of my back hair. I recalled how my great-grandfather, Canaútli the Rememberer, had told of the long-ago Yaki woman—and yes, her name had been G'nda Ké—who turned some of the peaceable early Aztéca into the bellicose Mexíca who battled their way to greatness.

"That was sheaves of sheaves of years ago," I said, certain that she did not need my explaining of what "that" was. "If you did not die then, as reported, Yaki woman, how old must you be?"

"That does not matter either. What matters is that you, too, Tenamáxtli, have left Aztlan. And now you are of a disposition to accept G'nda Ké's gift of her other disease."

I blurted, "By Huitzli, I want none of your afflictions!"

"Ayyo, but you do! You just spoke the word—the name of him—Huitzilopóchtli, god of war. For that is G'nda Ké's other disease, and one she will happily help you spread through all The One World. War!"

I could only stare at her. I had not lately partaken of chápari, so this awful creature was hardly a drunken hallucination.

"You will recruit no warriors here, Tenamáxtli. Do not be tempted to loiter in this easeful Utopia. Your tonáli has destined you to a harder life, and a more glorious one. Go north. You and G'nda Ké will meet again, probably many times, along the way. Wherever you need her, she will be there, to help infect others with the sublime disease that you and she share."

She had been walking backward away from me as she spoke, and was now at some distance, so I shouted, "I need you not! I want you not! I can make war without you! Go back to the Míctlan you came from."

Just before she disappeared around a corner of one of the village houses, she spoke a last time, not loudly but audibly, and ominously:

"Tenamáxtli, no man can ever repulse or elude a woman bent on spite and malice. You will never be rid of this one while she still lives and hates and schemes."

Padre Vasco said, "I never even heard of the Yaki."

I told him, "They abide in the very farthest northwest corner of The One World. In forests and mountain ranges far beyond the desert wastes that our people call the Dead-Bone Lands. The Yaki are reputed to be the fiercest, most bloodthirsty of savages, loathing every other human being, including their own nearest relatives. I am quite ready to give credence to that reputation, after meeting my first Yaki yesterday. If the women are all like her, the men must be fiends indeed."

It was because I liked and admired Vasco de Quiroga that I had troubled to revisit his capital village of Santa Cruz Pátzcuaro. Leaving out any mention of the Yaki woman's warlike aspirations—those she had expressed yesterday as well as those imputed to her in Canaútli's tales of long ago—I recounted to the padre what else I knew of her evil doings and intentions.

"It happened in a time before imagining," I said, "but the happenings were never forgotten. The words were repeated from one aged Rememberer to the next. How that mysterious Yaki woman insinuated herself into our serene Aztlan, preaching the worship of an alien god, and thereby setting brother against brother."

"Hmmm," mused the padre. "Lílith comes to Cain and Abel."

"Pardon?" I said.

"Nothing. Go on, my son."

"Well, either she did not die, all those ages ago, and became a demoness immortal, or she spawned a long line of demoness daughters. For there is most certainly just such a Yaki woman trying to disrupt your Utopia. This G'nda Ké is far more of a menace to your colonists here than any number of Purémpe women merely hungry for a man's embrace. It was my great-grandfather's belief that because the Yaki males are notorious for cruelly abusing their females, this particular Yaki woman is out to wreak revenge on every man alive."

"Hmmm," the padre murmured again. "Ever since Lílith, every country of the Old World has known a similar female predator, eager to rip the entrails out of any male. Real woman or mythical, who can say? In various languages she is the harpy, the lamia, the witchwife, the nightmare hag, la bella dama sin merced. But tell me, Juan Británico. If I am to thwart this demoness, how do I find and recognize her?"

"It might be difficult," I admitted. "G'nda Ké could pass as a transient young woman of any nation—except the bald Purémpecha, of course—even as a Spanish señorita, if she chose to disguise herself. I confess I cannot remember her face well enough to describe her. It was handsome enough, but it seems to blur in my memory. Except for three things. I can tell you that her hair is of no living color. And her skin is flyspecked with freckles. And her eyes are like those of the axólotl lizard. However, if she saw me take the road hither, padre, she would know I intended to warn you about her, and she may well have gone into hiding or fled Utopia altogether."

We were interrupted by the sudden entry of that young friar I had seen before, now agitated and shouting:

"Padre! Come quickly! A terrible fire to the eastward! San Marcos Churítzio—the guitarra village—it seems to be all ablaze!"

We dashed outdoors and looked where he pointed. An immense column of smoke was rising there, much like the one I had once caused to rise over Grasshopper Hill. But this mischief was none of my doing, so I stayed where I stood when Padre Vasco, his friars and everyone else of Santa Cruz went running to help their neighbors in San Marcos. I of course assumed that the fire was the work of that malevolent G'nda Ké—until I felt a tug at my mantle and turned to find that Tiptoe, this time having personified her name, had slipped up noiselessly behind me. She was smiling broadly, triumphantly, so I said:

"You did that! Set that village afire."

"Not I, but my warrior women. Ever since I assembled them, we have been searching for you, Tenamáxtli. I saw you in that village yonder. When you departed, I gave orders to my women, then I followed you here." She added, with some scorn, "I could see that you had acquired no other followers."

I gestured toward the smoke. "But why do that? Those Mexíca are a harmless lot."

"Because they are a harmless lot. To show you what we mere women can do. Come, Tenamáxtli, before the Spaniards return. Come and meet the first recruits of your army of rebellion."

I accompanied her to a mountainside overlooking the lake, where her "warriors" had regrouped to wait for her after their torch-bearing foray among the buildings of Erasmo's village. Besides Tiptoe, there were forty-two females, of all ages from barely nubile to matronly. Though they were also of varying degrees of sightliness—uniformly bald, of course—all looked healthy, sturdy and determined to show their mettle. I was resignedly thinking, "Well, they are only women, but they are forty-three more allies than I have had until now...," when suddenly my masculine presumptuousness was rebuked.

"Pakápeti," one of the older women barked at her. "It was you who enlisted us in this venture. Why now do you ask us to accept this stranger as our leader?"

I expected Tiptoe to say something about my masterly qualities of leadership, or at least to mention the fact that this "venture" was originally my idea, but all she said was, turning to me, "Tenamáxtli, show them how your arcabuz works."

Though considerably exasperated, I did as she said—charging the weapon, then discharging it at a squirrel perched on a tree limb not too far distant (and this time, happily, hitting what I aimed at). The ball of lead fairly disintegrated the little animal, but the women excitedly fingered the remaining scraps of fur and handed them around, and clucked admiringly at the destructiveness of the thunder-stick, and marveled at my possessing such a thing. Then, all together, they began to clamor that I show them how to wield the arcabuz, and that I let them take turns at practicing with it.

"No," I said firmly. "If and when each of you procures a thunder-stick of your own, then I will teach you how to use it."

"And how do we manage that?" demanded that same older woman, who had the voice (and visage) of a cóyotl. "The white men's weapons are not procurable just for the asking."

"Here is one who will tell you how," said a new voice.

We had been joined by a forty-fourth woman, this one not bald, not Purémpe—this one the Yaki G'nda Ké again, and again obtruding herself into my affairs. Evidently, in just the short time since I had last seen her, the demoness had somehow joined this troop of women and ingratiated herself with them, for they listened respectfully when she spoke. And even I could not find fault with what she had to say:

"There are comely girls among you. And there are numerous Spanish soldiers here in Michihuácan, manning army outposts or guarding the estancias of Spanish landowners. You have only to catch the eye of those men and, with your beauty and your seductive wiles—"

"Are you suggesting that we go astraddle the road?" cried one of the comely young women, using the phrase that connotes prostitution or wanton promiscuity. "You would have us couple with our avowed enemies?"

I was tempted to say that even hateful, unwashed Christian white men ought to be preferable to billy goats and such other mates as were currently available in Michihuácan. But I kept silent and let G'nda Ké reply:

"There are many ways of besting an enemy in war, young woman. And seduction is one way denied to male combatants. You should take pride in having a weapon unique to our female sex."

"Well..." said the girl who had objected, sounding somewhat mollified.

G'nda Ké continued, "Besides, as Purémpe women, you have another unique advantage. The Spaniards' own females are repellently hairy of head and body. The Spanish soldiers will be curious to—shall we say?—explore any woman totally and temptingly hairless."

Most of the bald heads nodded agreement.

"Go to each guard or to each post," the Yaki woman went on, "singly or severally, and exercise your charms. Do whatever is necessary, either to addle the soldiers with lust or—if you care to go so far—to wring them limp and helpless. Then steal their thunder-sticks."

"And any other weapons they may have," I hastened to put in. "Also the pólvora and lead for those weapons."

"Now?" asked several of the women, almost eagerly. "Do we go this instant to seek those soldiers?"

I said, "I do not see why not, if you are indeed ready to employ your womanly attractions in our cause. But you will appreciate that I have not had time yet to think out any extensive plan of action. Most assuredly, there must be more of us. And to find more, I must go far beyond this land."

"I will come with you," Tiptoe said decisively. "If I could rally this many women in such a short time, surely I can do the same among other peoples and nations."

"Very well," I said, having no objection to the company of such an enterprising (and enjoyable) consort. "And since you and I will be traveling," I added, magnanimously according her the rank of leader equal to myself, "I suggest, Pakápeti, that we jointly appoint a second in command here."

"Yes," she said, and looked over the gathering. "Why not you, newcome comrade?" She pointed to the Yaki woman.

"No, no," said that one, trying to look modest and self-effacing. "These gallant Purémpe women should be led by one of their own. Besides, like you and Tenamáxtli, G'nda Ké will have work to do elsewhere. For the cause."

"Then," said Tiptoe, "I recommend Kurúpani." She indicated the cóyotl-looking woman—another one egregiously misnamed, for that Poré word means "Butterfly."

"I concur," I said, and spoke directly to Butterfly. "It may be a long time before we can wage real warfare against the white men. But while Pakápeti and I are scouring the country for further recruits, you will be in charge of mounting that campaign to procure weapons."

"No more than that?" the woman asked, and showed me the bowl of hot embers that was their only weapon at present. "Cannot we do some burning, as well?"

I exclaimed, "Ayyo, by all means! I am heartily in favor of anything that will harass and worry the Spaniards. Also, your burning of army posts or hacienda buildings should distract their attention from whatever larger war preparations Pakápeti and I may be making elsewhere. Just one thing, though, Butterfly. Please do not molest any more of these villages here around Pátzcuaro. Neither Padre Vasco nor his tame Mexíca are our enemies."

The woman assented, if grudgingly. G'nda Ké frowned and looked ready to challenge my instructions, but I turned my back on her and spoke to Tiptoe:

"We will go north from here, and we can start right now, if you are ready. I see you already have a traveling pack. Is there anything else you might require, anything I can provide for you?"

"Yes," she said. "As soon as possible, Tenamáxtli, I want a thunder-stick of my own."

XV

"I insist," she said, some ten or twelve days later. "I want a thunder-stick of my own. And this will probably be our last opportunity for me to get one."

We were crouched in some bushes on a knoll overlooking a Spanish guardhouse. That consisted of only a small wooden shack, in which were posted two soldiers, armed and armored, with a fenced pen alongside, containing four horses, two of them saddled and bridled.

"We could also steal a horse for each of us," Tiptoe urged. "And surely we could learn to ride them."

We were at the northern border of New Galicia. Everything south of here was comfortably called by the Spaniards their Tierra de Paz, everything to the north was known as the Tierra de Guerra, and this area along the border was somewhat hazily described as the Tierra Disputable. From east to west along here, there was an army outpost like this one situated every few one-long-runs, and mounted patrols continuously prowled between them. All the soldiers were on the alert against any forays by war parties from the nations of the Tierra de Guerra.

Years earlier, these same or similar guards had paid little heed when my mother, my uncle and I—obviously innocuous travelers—had crossed some part of this border, going southward. But I dared not assume that the soldiers would be so inattentive this time. For one reason, I was sure that even the most negligent guardsman would happily detain and search a young woman as conspicuously unusual and attractive as Tiptoe—and probably would do more than that to her.

"Well?" she said, digging an elbow into my ribs.

I grumbled, "I am not too eager to share you with someone else, especially a white someone else."

"Ayya!" she scoffed. "You did not hesitate to tell those other women to prostrate and prostitute themselves."

"I was not so intimately acquainted with those other women. Nor did they have any consorts to object to their going astraddle the road. You do."

"Then my consort can also rescue me before I am soiled beyond redemption. Shall we wait until one of those men leaves and you have only the one to deal with?"

"I suspect that neither man gets relieved until a patrol arrives from some other post. If you are really determined on this, we might as well act now. My weapon is charged. Go and employ yours. Your seductive self. When you have got your victim thoroughly bedazzled, and the other gawking, give a cry—of ecstatic admiration, anticipation, whatever—loud enough for me to hear, and I will come bursting through the door. Be prepared to seize and entangle your man while I slay the onlooker. Then together we will overpower yours."

"The plan sounds simple enough. Simple plans are best."

"Let us hope so. Just do not get so carried away that you neglect to utter that shout."

She asked teasingly, "Are you afraid that I might perhaps enjoy the embrace of a white man? Even come to prefer it?"

"No," I said. "Once you have got close enough to a white man to smell him, I doubt that you will prefer him. But I want this done quickly. There will be a patrol arriving sometime."

"Then... ximopanólti, Tenamáxtli," she said, mockingly taking her leave with utmost formality.

She stood up from among the bushes and walked down the slope—slowly, but not at all formally—undulating her hips as if she were doing what our people call the quequezcuícatl, "the ticklish dance." The soldiers must have glimpsed her through some peephole in their shack wall. They both came to the door, and except for one significant look that passed between them, they leeringly ogled her progress all the way, then very politely stepped aside for her to enter, and the door closed behind all three of them.

I waited, then, and waited and waited, but heard no summoning cry from Tiptoe. After a considerable while, I began cursing myself for having made my plan too simple. Did the soldiers suspect that the comely young woman had not been traveling alone? Were they simply holding her hostage while they waited, weapons at the ready, for her presumed companion to appear? Eventually I decided that there was only one way to find out. Risking the chance that one of the men was still keeping a lookout at the peephole, I stood up in plain view of the shack. When there came no explosion of pólvora or shout of challenge, I scurried down the knoll, my own arcabuz at the ready. When still it seemed I had been unnoticed, I crossed the level ground before the shack and leaned an ear against the door. All I could hear was a sort of chorus of voices grunting. This puzzled me, but evidently Tiptoe was not being tortured to screaming, so I waited a little longer. At last, unable to bear the suspense, I gave the door a push.

It was not fastened in any way, and swung loosely inward, letting daylight into the dark interior. Against the shack's rear wall, the guards had built a shelf of planks, probably used by them alternately as a dining board and sleeping cot, but now being used for something else. On that shelf Tiptoe was stretched, her bare legs splayed apart and her mantle bunched up around her neck. She was silent, but she was squirming desperately, because both of the soldiers were raping her simultaneously. Standing at opposite ends of the shelf, one man had rammed his tepúli into her nether orifice, the other into her upper, and they were grinning lasciviously at one another while they pumped and grunted.

Instantly I discharged my arcabuz, and at that close distance I could not miss my aim. The soldier standing between Tiptoe's legs was slammed away from her and against the shack wall, his leather cuirass torn open and his chest abruptly bright red. Though the room was as instantly clouded with blue smoke, I could see the second soldier also lurch back, away from Tiptoe's head, and he also, curiously, was wet with much blood. Clearly he was still alive—he was shrieking like a woman—but he obviously posed no immediate danger to me, for he had both hands clutched to what remained of his tepúli, while it hosed out blood like a fountain's spout. I did not take time to grab for my other weapon—the obsidian knife I wore at my belt—but merely reversed my arcabuz in my one hand, holding it like a club. I reached out my other hand to the agonized soldier, who stood teetering and screeching in my face, snatched off his metal helmet and beat his head with the arcabuz's butt until he fell dead.

When I turned from him, Tiptoe had clambered off the plank shelf and stood, also unsteady on her feet, letting her mantle fall to clothe her nakedness, while she choked and coughed and spat onto the dirt floor. Her face, where it was not slick with juices, was a sickly greenish color. I took her arm and hurried her out into the open air, starting to say, "I would have come sooner, Pakápeti—"

But she only reeled away from me, still making strangling noises, to lean on the fence of the horse pen, where a hollowed-out log trough held water for the animals. She plunged her head under the water, then several times tilted her head back to gargle the water in her mouth and spit it out, and meanwhile, with her cupped hands, scooped water up under her mantle to wash her nether parts. When finally she felt clean enough or composed enough to speak, she did so, but disjointedly, gagging and retching between words:

"You saw... I could not... shout..."

"Do not talk," I said. "Stay here and rest. I must hide the bodies."

The very mention of the men made her face go ill and greenish again, so I left her and went into the shack. As I dragged one dead man, then the other, by the feet out of the door, I was struck by an idea. I ran again to the top of the knoll, and could espy no patrol or any other moving being either east or west. So I ran back down to the soldiers and clumsily, but as quickly as I could, I unstrapped their various pieces of metal and leather armor. When I could get to the heavy blue canvas uniforms beneath, I stripped those garments off the bodies, too. Several pieces of the clothing were ruined, either rent by the blast of my arcabuz or drenched with blood. But I salvaged and set aside one shirt, one pair of trousers, and a pair of stout military boots.

When they were unclad, the corpses were easier to move, but I was panting and sweating heavily by the time I had dragged each of them around to the far side of the knoll. There was thick underbrush there, and I thought I did a creditable job of hiding them and the remainder of their weapons in it. Then, with a torn shirt of theirs, I went back over the traces of our passage—my own tracks, their smeared blood, the broken twigs and disarranged greenery—doing my best to make them unnoticeable.

The smoke had cleared from the shack by then, so I went in and picked up the two arcabuces the soldiers had had no chance to use, and the leather pouches in which they kept balls and pólvora, and two metal water flasks and one fine, sharp steel knife. There was also a pouch of dried, fibrous meat that I thought worth taking, and some leather straps and lengths of rope. While I was collecting these things, I saw that the dirt floor was much splotched with clotting blood, so I used the knife to chop up the earthen surface, then started stamping it flat again. I was busy at that when something occurred to me, and I paused to look more closely around me on the ground.

"What are you doing?" Tiptoe asked urgently. She was leaning against the doorjamb, limp, looking still sick and wretched. "You have hidden them. We must get away from here." I could see that she was bravely trying to suppress those gut-wrenching spasms of nausea, but her breast throbbed with the effort of it.

"I want to hide everything of them," I said. "There is—er—one piece missing."

Tiptoe suddenly looked even sicker than before, and the heaves of her breast became again violent retches between her words: "Did not mean to... but... the thunder-noise... I bit... and then I..."

She swallowed, with a phlegmy gulp, to fight down the gagging that strangled her next words. I did not need to hear the words. I had to swallow several times myself, to keep from vomiting most unmanfully.

Tiptoe disappeared from the doorway, and I hurried to finish tamping the shack floor. Then I ran once more to the top of the knoll to make sure that we were not yet in hazard of being interrupted by any patrols or passersby. Though I was by now getting very tired, I continued trying to behave manfully, to inspirit poor Tiptoe, who was again gargling water at the horse trough. Manfully, I overcame what would have been anybody's natural timidity around such huge and alien animals as horses, and approached those in the fenced pen. I was somewhat surprised, and much emboldened, when they did not recoil from me or strike out at me with their massive hooves. All four of them merely regarded me with deerlike looks of mild curiosity, and one of the barebacked animals stood submissively still while I bundled onto its back the various things I had plundered from the soldiers and the shack, tying them on with the bits of rope and straps I had found there. When the horse still showed no signs of objecting, I added to its burden my traveling pack and that of Tiptoe. Then I went to where she sat huddled and miserable beside the trough, and bent to help her to stand. She flinched away from my hand and said, almost snarling:

"Please, do not touch me again. Not ever again, Tenamáxtli."

I murmured encouragingly, "Just get up and help me lead the horses, Pakápeti. As you said, we must be away from here. And when we are safely distant, I will teach you how to kill Spaniards with your very own thunder-stick."

"Why should I stop with Spaniards?" she muttered, and spat on the ground, and added disgustedly, "Men!"

She was now sounding uncomfortably like that Yaki witchwife, G'nda Ké. But she stood up and, evincing no nervousness at all, took the reins of one saddled horse and the rope I had tied around the neck of the pack animal. I led the other two horses, and kicked down a fence rail so we could get out, and away we all went.

I was trusting that when a patrol did arrive at that outpost, those men would be confounded by the inexplicable absence of the guards and all their animals, and would waste some time waiting for the truants to reappear, before going to search for them. Whether or not the patrol found the two corpses, they would almost certainly assume that the outpost had been attacked by some war party from the north. And they would hardly dare to go chasing after them into the Tierra de Guerra until they had assembled a considerable force of other soldiers. So Tiptoe and I and our acquisitions should be able to put ample distance between ourselves and any pursuit. Nevertheless, I did not take us straight to the north. I had already calculated, from where the sun stood in the sky at every time of day, that we must be almost directly eastward of my home city of Aztlan. If I was to start recruiting warriors from the still-unconquered lands, where better than there? So it was in that direction that we went.

On our first night in the Tierra de Guerra, we stopped beside a spring of good water, tied the horses to nearby trees—each on a long tether, so it could graze and drink—laid only a small fire and ate of the dried meat I had brought along. Then we spread our blankets side by side, and because Tiptoe was still being disconsolate and untalkative, I reached out a hand to give her a comforting caress. She irritably brushed the hand away and said firmly:

"Not tonight, Tenamáxtli. We both have too many other things to think about. Tomorrow we must learn to ride the horses and I must learn to wield the thunder-stick."

Very well, next morning we loosed the two saddled horses from their tethers, Tiptoe doffed her sandals and put a bare foot into the dangling wooden piece provided for that purpose. We both had seen many Spaniards on horseback, so we were not entirely ignorant of the method of mounting. Tiptoe required a boost from me to get up there, but I clambered onto my horse by using a tree stump for a mounting block. Again the horses made no complaint; evidently they were accustomed to being ridden not by a single master but by anyone who had need of them. I kicked my bare heels to make mine walk, and then tried to turn it leftward in a circle, to stay close to our camping place.

I had seen other riders do that, apparently by pulling one rein to tug the horse's head in the desired direction. But when I yanked hard on the left rein, I succeeded only in getting a sidewise stare from the horse's left eye—an almost schoolmasterish look, mingling "you are wrong" and "you are stupid." I took heed that the horse was trying to teach me a lesson, so I paused to reflect. Perhaps the riders I had watched had only seemed to jerk their horses' heads this way and that. After a little experimenting, I discovered that I had to do no more than lay the right-side rein gently against the horse's neck and it would turn left as I wished. I imparted that information to Tiptoe, and we both sat our saddles proudly as our horses sauntered around in leftwise circles.

Next, I brushed my horse's sides with my heels to make it move faster. It commenced the rocking gait that the Spanish call the trote, and I learned another lesson. Until now, I had supposed that sitting on a leather saddle, nicely curved to cup one's backside, would be more comfortable than sitting on something stiff, like an icpáli chair. I was wrong. This was excruciating. After the trotting gait had jounced me for only the briefest while, I began to fear that my backbone was being driven through the top of my head. And clearly the horse did not enjoy being under my thumping rump; it turned its head to give me another look of reproach and slowed to a walk again. Tiptoe had endured the same brief experience of being painfully hammered from underneath, so we mutually decided to postpone any attempt to proceed at speed until we had sufficiently practiced just sitting astride for some time.

So, all the rest of that day, we rode at the walk, leading the two other horses behind, and all six of us were satisfied with that leisurely pace. But then, near sundown, when we found another watering place at which to stop for the night, both Tiptoe and I were shocked to find ourselves so stiff that we could only slowly and creakily get down from our saddles. We had not noticed until then how our shoulders and arms ached, just from holding the reins; how our ribs hurt as if they had been cudgeled; how our crotches felt as if they had been split with wedges. And our legs were not only cramped and trembly from their having clutched the horses' sides all day, they were also almost bloodily raw from having rubbed against the saddles' leather flaps. These pains I found hard to understand, since we had ridden so slowly and easefully. I was beginning to wonder why the white men had ever found horses useful as their means of transport. At any rate, Tiptoe and I were too sore even to think of taking up practice with the arcabuces right then, and that night Tiptoe had no need to fend off any amative overtures from me.

But the next day we dauntlessly determined to try riding again, and I was at least able to provide us with clothing more protective than the mantles that left our legs bare and abradable. I got out the various items of Spanish costume that I had packed. Though Tiptoe angrily refused to wear anything that the two frontier guards had bequeathed to us, I did persuade her to put on the shirt, trousers and boots that I had acquired at the Cathedral. They were far too big for her, of course, but they served. And I donned the military boots, the blue shirt and the trousers of one of those soldiers' uniforms. When we set off, I tried riding the unsaddled horse that was carrying no pack, thinking that maybe I could better adapt to its bare back. I could not. Even at the walking gait, I soon began to fear that the horse's rooftree backbone was cleaving me asunder from my buttocks all the way upward. I abandoned the trial and remounted my saddled horse.

Ayya, I will not dwell on all the painful trials and errors that Tiptoe and I made during the next several days. Suffice it to say that we did at last get used to riding astride the animals, and so did our muscles and skins and buttocks. In fact, in time—as if to prove the truth of a remark she had once made to me—Tiptoe became a much better rider than I, and took delight in showing off her prowess. I at least managed to keep up with her, once I learned to urge my horse directly from the walk—not having to suffer the jounces of trotting—into the easier-to-sit gait of the galope.

During those days, too, as our aches and pains diminished, I instructed Tiptoe in the charging and discharging of the arcabuz, letting her use one of those I had taken from the soldiers. Rather to my consternation, she proved to be better at that, as well, than I was. That is to say, she could make the lead ball hit whatever she was aiming at, even at a considerable distance, perhaps three times out of five, while I had long considered myself adept if I could do the same thing one time out of five. My masculine pride was salvaged, though, when I exchanged weapons with her, and our respective score of punctured targets changed accordingly. It was evident that the soldiers' arcabuces were for some reason more accurate than the copy that the artisan Pochotl had made for me. I carefully examined all three of the weapons now in our possession, and could see no difference among them to account for that. But of course I was no expert on such things, and neither had Pochotl been.

So, from then on, Tiptoe and I each carried one of the purloined arcabuces. I deemed it prudent to keep them hidden in our bedrolls, and we took one out only when we wished to kill game for fresh meat. Tiptoe liked to make that her task, and was inclined to flaunt her marksmanship by bringing down rabbits and pheasants. But I cautioned her that the pólvora was too precious to waste on such small creatures, especially because when the heavy ball did hit one, there was not much left of it to eat. Thereafter, she aimed at (and almost always hit) only deer and wild boars. I did not discard Pochotl's weapon, so painstakingly handcrafted, but kept it also hidden among our packs, in case it should sometime be needed.

On one of the nights of one of those days in the hinterlands, I again ventured to extend a caress to Tiptoe, in her blankets beside me, and again she fended me away, saying:

"No, Tenamáxtli. I feel unclean. You must have seen—I have grown a stubble of hair on my head and... and elsewhere. I feel that I am no longer a properly immaculate Purémpe. Until I am..." and she rolled over and went to sleep.

Exasperated and frustrated, I made sure, during the next day's ride, to seek out an amóli plant and dig up its root. That night, when I roasted a boar haunch over our fire, I also set my metal flask of water to boil. After we had eaten, I said:

"Pakápeti, here is hot water and here is a soap-root and here is a good steel knife, which I have whetted to utmost keenness. You can easily make yourself a properly immaculate Purémpe once more."

She said airily, "I think I will decline, Tenamáxtli. You have dressed me in man's clothing, so I have decided to let my hair grow out and make myself look like a man."

I naturally remonstrated with her, pointing out that the gods had put beautiful women on this earth for other and better purposes than to impersonate men. But she was adamant, and I had to conclude that her defilement back there at the outpost had simply made the copulative act hateful to her—that she never again would couple with me or any other man. There was no objection that I could, in conscience, make to that. I could only respect her decision and, meanwhile, entertain two hopes. One was my hope that since Tiptoe now knew how to use an arcabuz, she would not take the whim to use it on the nearest male, that being myself. And I hoped that we would soon, in our journeying, come upon a town or village where the women had not, for whatever reason, decided to repel the advances of every man of mankind.

Instead, what we came upon, late one afternoon, was something totally unexpected—a troop of mounted Spaniards, most of them armed and armored, riding through this Tierra de Guerra—and we encountered them so suddenly that we had no chance of evasion. They were not, as I might have anticipated, a body of soldiers pursuing us to wreak revenge for what we had done at the border outpost. I had never ceased keeping a wary lookout to our rear. If I had seen any sign of a patrol approaching from behind us, I could have taken care to avoid capture. But this troop rode up upon us from the farther side of a hill that we were ascending, and obviously they were as surprised as we were when we met at the top.

There was nothing I could do except tell Tiptoe in Poré, "Keep silent!" then raise a comradely hand to the lead soldier—who was groping for the arcabuz slung across his saddle horn—and greet him cordially, as if he and we were accustomed to meeting thus every day, "Buenas tardes, amigo. ¿Qué tal?"

He stammered, "B-buenas tardes," and, with the hand that had been reaching for the weapon, returned my salute. He said nothing more, but deferred to two other riders—men in officers' uniform—who shouldered their horses up beside him.

One of them growled a vile blasphemy, "¡Me cago en la puta Virgen!" then, eyeing my partial uniform and the army brands on our horses, demanded impolitely, "¿Quién eres, Don Mierda?"

Disquieted though I was, I had wit enough to tell him the same thing I had told Padre Vasco, that I was Juan Británico, interpreter and assistant to the notarius who served the Bishop of Mexíco.

The officer sneered and exclaimed, "¡Y un cojón!" a vulgar expression of disbelief. "An indio on horseback? That is a thing forbidden!"

I was glad that our far-more-strictly-forbidden arcabuces were out of his sight, and said humbly, "You are riding in the direction of the City of Mexíco, Señor Capitán. If you like, I will accompany you thither, where Bishop Zumárraga and Notarius de Molina will assuredly vouch for me. It was they who provided these horses for this journey of mine."

I do not know if the officer had ever heard those two names before, but my speaking them seemed to mitigate his disbelief slightly. He was less gruff when he demanded, "And who is the other man?"

"My slave and attendant," I lied, grateful now for her having chosen to pose as a man, and gave her name in Spanish, "Se llama de Puntas."

The other officer laughed. "A man named Tiptoe! How stupid these indios!"

The first one laughed, too, then, derisively misspeaking my name, said, "And you, Don Zonzón, what are you doing here?"

More composed by now, I was able to say glibly, "A special mission, Señor Capitán. The bishop wishes to ascertain the temper of the savages here in the Tierra de Guerra. I was sent because I am of their race, and speak several of their languages, but also am manifestly vested with Spanish and Christian authority."

"¡Joder!" he rasped. "Everyone already knows the temper of these savages. Their temper is ugly. Murderous. Bloodthirsty. Why do you think we travel only in unassailable numbers?"

"Just so," I said blandly. "I intend to report to the bishop that he might palliate the savages' temper by sending Christian missionaries to do humanitarian works among them, in the manner of Padre Vasco de Quiroga."

Again, I do not know if the officer had ever heard of that priest, but my apparent familiarity with so many churchmen seemed finally to dispel his suspicions.

He said, "We too are on a humanitarian mission. Our Governor of New Galicia, Nuño de Guzmán, assembled this numerous company to escort four men to the City of Mexíco. They are three brave Christian Spaniards and a loyal Moro slave, long believed lost in the far-off colony called Florida. But, most miraculously, they fought their way hither—this close to civilization. Now they wish to tell the story of their wanderings to the Marqués Cortés himself."

"And I am sure you will safely deliver them, Señor Capitán," I said. "But this day latens. My own slave and I had intended to proceed farther, but we passed a good water hole not a league back, sufficient for your whole troop's camping. If you will allow, we will return there to lead you and, by your leave, camp there with you."

"By all means, Don Juan Británico," he said, companionably now. "Lead on."

Tiptoe and I turned our horses about, and as the company came clanking and shuffling and clattering behind us, I translated to her what had passed between me and the officer. She asked, her voice again trembly because she was speaking of white men:

"Why in the name of the war god Curicáuri do you wish to spend the night with them?"

"Because the officer mentioned that butcher Guzmán," I said. "The man who laid waste your land of Michihuácan and claimed it for his own. I had believed there were no Spaniards in these northern parts. I want to find out what Guzmán is doing, so distant from his New Galicia."

"If you must," she said resignedly.

"And you, Tiptoe, please just remain inconspicuous. Let the white men hunt their own game for their night's meal. Please do not take out a thunder-stick to show them your mastery of it."

The officer—his name was Tallabuena, and his rank was only teniente, but I kept on ingratiatingly addressing him as Capitán—sat beside me at the campfire. While the two of us gnawed on juicy roast deer meat, he confided quite freely what I wished to know about that Governor Guzmán:

"No, no, he has not come this far north. He is still safely resident in New Galicia. The canny Guzmán knows better than to risk his fat culón up here in the Tierra de Guerra. But he has established his capital right on the northern border of New Galicia, and hopes to make a fair city of it."

"Why?" I asked. "The old capital of Michihuácan was on the shore of the Lake of Rushes, far to the south."

"Guzmán is no fisherman. His home province of Galicia back in Old Spain is silver-mining country. It follows that he expects to make his fortune here from silver. So he founded his capital in a region near the coast, where his prospectors have discovered rich veins of that and other ores. He has named it Compostela. So far, it consists just of himself and his favorite fawning compinches and his cadre of troops, but he will be rounding up native slaves to toil underground to mine the silver for him. I pity those poor wretches."

"So do I," I murmured, while deciding that Tiptoe and I would set our direction more north of west when we moved on, not to stumble into that Compostela. Still, it troubled me that the butcher Guzmán had set his new city so close to my native Aztlan—no more than a hundred one-long-runs distant, as best I could estimate.

"But come, Don Juan," Tallabuena said now. "Come and meet the heroes of the hour."

He led me to where the three heroes sat eating. They were being devotedly attended by a number of lesser-ranking soldiers, who plied them with the choicest portions of deer meat and poured for them wine from leather bags and jumped to fulfill their every least request. Also in attendance on them was a man in the traveling dress of a friar, who seemed even more servilely to seek their favor. The heroes, I could see, had originally been white-skinned, but they were now so sunburned that their complexion was darker than my own. The fourth man, who would also have been accounted a hero, I suppose, if he had been white, sat eating alone and apart and unattended. He was black and could not have been burned any blacker.

I would never see these several Spaniards again after this one night. But though I could not have known it then, the tonáli of every one of them was so linked with mine that our separate future lives—and numberless other lives, and even the destinies of nations—would inextricably be intertwined. So I will tell here of what I learned about them, and how I befriended one of them, in the brief time before we parted.

XVI

The leader of the heroes was respectfully addressed by everyone else by his Christian name of Don Álvar. But when he was introduced to me, I wondered why any Spaniards should have laughed at Tiptoe's name, because the surname of this man Álvar was Cabeza de Vaca, which means "Cow Head." Despite that inauspicious appellation, he and his fellows truly had done a heroic feat. I had to piece together their story from their converse with the soldiers attending them, and from what the Teniente Tallabuena told me—because the three heroes, after having greeted me politely enough, did not once thereafter speak directly to me. And when I knew their history, I could hardly blame them for wanting nothing to do with any indio.

I know that Florida means "flowery" in the Spanish tongue, but to this day I do not know where the land of that name is situated. Wherever it is, it must be a terrible sort of place. More than eight years before, this man Cow Head, his surviving companions and some hundreds of other white men, together with their horses and weapons and provisions, had sailed from the island colony of Cuba, intending to settle a new colony in that Florida.

From their first setting sail, they were beset by vicious springtime storms. Then, when they finally landed, they encountered other dismaying troubles. Where the countryside of Florida was not dense with nearly impenetrable forests, it was laced with swift rivers difficult to ford, or hot and stinking swamps, and in such wilderness their horses were next to useless. Rapacious woodland animals stalked the adventurers, and snakes and insects bit and stung them and lethal swamp fevers and illnesses assailed them. Meanwhile, the native inhabitants of Florida were not at all happy to receive these pale-skinned invaders, but picked them off, one after another, with arrows discharged from ambush among the concealing trees or, in open country, frontally attacked them in force. The travel-exhausted and fever-weakened Spaniards could fight back only feebly, and they were increasingly debilitated by hunger, because the indios also carried away their own domestic animals and burned their own crops of maize and other edibles, ahead of the white men's advance. (It seemed incredible to me, but the would-be colonists were evidently incapable of feeding themselves from the bounty of animals, birds, fish and plants that every wilderness offers to men of initiative and enterprise.) Anyway, the numbers of the Spaniards so alarmingly diminished that the remainder abandoned all hope of surviving in that place. They turned about and retreated to the coast, only to find that their ships' crews, doubtless having given them up for lost, had sailed away and left them marooned in that hostile land.

Discouraged, sick, fearful, besieged on every side, they determined on the desperate expedient of building new boats for themselves. And they did—five boats—of tree limbs and palm leaves, lashed together with ropes braided from the horses' manes and tails, caulked with pine pitch, rigged with sails made of their clothes sewn together. By this time, they had slaughtered their remaining horses for their meat, and had used their hides to make bags for carrying potable water. When the boats cast off, their five masters—Cow Head was one—took them not far out to sea, but kept within sight of the coastline, believing that if they followed it far enough westward they must eventually reach the shores of New Spain.

They found the sea and the land alike inimical, both earth and water frequently pounded by storms—cold winter storms now—of scouring winds and torrential rains. Even in calm weather there were rains—of arrows—from indios in war canoes that came out to harass them. Their scanty food supplies gave out, and their untanned leather water bags soon rotted, but every time the Spaniards tried to land to replenish their provisions, they were repelled by more swarms of arrows. Inevitably, the five boats were driven apart. Four of them were never seen or heard of again. The remaining boat, carrying Cow Head and some number of his comrades, after a long time did manage to get ashore.

The white men, now barely clothed, almost famished, cold to the bone, weakened to near decrepitude, found an occasional native tribe—a tribe as yet uninformed that it was being invaded—that was willing to shelter and feed strangers. But, as the white men dauntlessly forged westward in hope of finding New Spain, they were more often savaged than succored. As they crossed wooded lands, vast grasslands, unbelievably broad rivers, high mountains and parched deserts, they were captured by one tribe or roving band of indios after another. The captors would enslave them, put them to hard labor, mistreat and beat and starve them. ("The damned red diablos," I heard Cow Head remark, "even let their hellfry brats amuse themselves by yanking out tufts of our beards.") And from one after another of those captivities the Spaniards had to contrive to escape, each time losing one or more of their number to death or recapture. What became of those comrades they left behind, they never would know.

When at long last they reached the far outskirts of New Spain, there were only four of them left alive: three whites—Cabeza de Vaca, Andrés Dorantes and Alonso del Castillo—and Estebanico, the black slave belonging to Dorantes. Except for my overhearing Castillo's comment that "we have crossed an entire continent"—and I have only the vaguest idea of what a continent is—I have no way of estimating how many leagues and one-long-runs those men so painfully traversed. All that I—and they—know for certain is that it took them eight years to do it. They would have made the journey in less time, of course, if they had been able to keep to the shore of the Eastern Sea. But their various captors had passed them from hand to hand, among ever more inland-dwelling tribes—or their escapes from those captivities had impelled them ever farther inland—so that they were very nearly at the shore of the Western Sea when finally they encountered a group of Spanish soldiers patrolling daringly deep in the Tierra de Guerra.

Those soldiers—awed, admiring, almost incredulous of the strangers' story—escorted them to an army outpost, where they were clothed and fed, then brought them to Compostela. Governor Guzmán gave them horses and a more numerous escort and the friar, Marcos de Niza, to see to their spiritual needs, and set them on the cross-country trail toward the City of Mexíco. There, Guzmán had assured them, they would be feasted and honored and celebrated as they deserved. And, all along the way, the heroes had been telling and retelling their tale to every new-met and eager listener. I listened as avidly as any, and with unfeigned admiration.

There were many questions I would have liked to ask those three white men, if they had not been so sedulously ignoring me. But I could not help hearing that Fray Marcos was asking some of the very same questions I had in mind. He seemed frustrated—and so was I—when the heroes protested their inability to supply this or that piece of information the friar wanted. So I went over to where the black man, Estebanico, sat apart. Now, the -ico that the Spaniards appended to his name is a condescending diminutive such as is used when speaking to children, so I took care to address him properly, as an adult:

"Buenas noches, Esteban."

"Buenas...," he mumbled, looking rather askance at an indio who spoke Spanish.

"May I talk with you, amigo?"

"Amigo?" he repeated, as if surprised to be addressed as an equal.

"Are we not both of us slaves to the white men?" I asked. "Here you sit, disdained, while your master preens and revels in the attention he is getting. I should like to know something of your adventures. Here, I have some picíetl. Let us smoke together, while I listen."

He still regarded me warily, but either I had established some comity between us or he was simply yearnful to be heard. He said, "What would you wish to know?"

"Just tell me what happened during the past eight years. I have listened to the Señor Cow Head's recollections. Now tell me yours."

And he did, from the expedition's first landing in that place called Florida, through all the disappointments and disasters that afflicted and decimated the fugitive survivors as they crossed the unknown lands from east to west. His account differed from the white men's only in two respects. Esteban clearly had suffered every hurt and hardship and humiliation that the other journeyers had endured, but no more and no less. He rather stressed this in his telling, as if to assert that those mutual sufferings had conferred on him an equality with his masters.

The other difference between his account and theirs was that Esteban had taken the trouble to learn at least some fragments of the various languages spoken by the peoples in whose communities they had spent any time. I had never heard the names of any of those tribes before. Esteban said they lived far to the northeast of this New Spain. The two last—or nearest—tribes that held the wanderers in captivity called themselves, he said, the Akimoél O'otam, or River People, and the To'ono O'otam, or Desert People. And of all the "damned red diablos" encountered, he said, they were the most devilishly diabolico. I tucked the two names into my memory. Whoever those people were, and wherever, they sounded like apt candidates for enlistment in my private rebel army.

By the time Esteban finished his story, everyone else around the fire had rolled himself in his blankets and gone to sleep. I was just about to ask the questions I had not been able to put to the white men, when I heard a stealthy footfall behind me. I spun about, and found it was only Tiptoe, asking in a whisper:

"Are you all right, Tenamáxtli?"

I answered in Poré, "Of course. Go back to sleep, Pakápeti." And I repeated that in Spanish, for Esteban to hear, "Go back to sleep, my man."

"I was asleep. But I woke in sudden fear that the beasts might have harmed you or trussed you as a prisoner. And ayya! This beast is black!"

"No matter, my dear. A friendly beast, for all that. But thank you for your concern."

As she crept away, Esteban laughed without humor and said jeeringly, "My man!"

I shrugged, "Even a slave can own a slave."

"I do not give a ripe, fragrant pedo how many slaves you own. And a slave that one may be, and as short-haired as I am, but a man she is not."

"Hush, Esteban. A pretense, yes, but only to avoid any risk of her being molested by these tunantón bluecoats."

"I should not mind doing a bit of that molesting myself," he said, grinning whitely in the darkness. "A few times during our journey, I got a taste of the red women, and found them tasty indeed. And they found me no more distasteful than if I had been white."

Probably so. I supposed that, even among the people of my own race, a woman lewd enough to be tempted to sample a foreign flesh would hardly think black flesh any more freakish than white. But Esteban apparently took the women's unfastidiousness to be another token—however pathetic a token—that there in the unknown lands he had been the equal of any white man. I almost confided to him that I had once enjoyed a woman of his race—or half black, at any rate—and found her no different inside than any "red" woman. Instead, I said only:

"Amigo Esteban, I believe you would like to return to those far lands."

It was he who shrugged now. "Even in brute captivity there, I was not the slave of any one man."

"Then why not just go back? Go now. Steal a horse. I will not raise any outcry."

He shook his head. "I have been a fugitive these eight years. I do not want to have slave-catchers hunting me for the rest of my life. And they would, even into the savage lands."

"Perhaps..." I said, ruminating. "Perhaps we can concoct a reason for you to go there legitimately, and with the white men's blessing."

"Oh? How?"

"I overheard that Fray Marcos interrogating—"

Esteban laughed again, and again without humor. "Ah, el galicoso."

"What?" I said. If I had understood the word, he had described the friar as suffering from an extremely shameful disease.

"I was jesting. A play of words. I should have said el galicano."

"I still do not..."

"El francés, then. He comes from France. Marcos de Niza is only the Spanish rendering of his real name, Marc de Nice, and Nice is a place in France. The friar is as reptilian as any other Frenchman."

I said impatiently, "I do not care if he has scales. Will you listen, Esteban? He kept prodding your white comrades to tell him about the seven cities. What did he mean by that?"

"¡Ay de mí!" He spat disgustedly. "An old Spanish fable. I have heard it many times. The Seven Cities of Antilia. They are supposedly cities of gold and silver and gems and ivory and crystal, situated in some never-yet-seen land far beyond the Ocean Sea. That fable has been repeated since time before time. When this New World was discovered, the Spaniards hoped to find those seven cities here. Rumors reached us, even in Cuba, that you indios of New Spain could tell us, if you would, where they are. But I am not asking you, amigo, mistake me not."

"Ask if you like," I said. "I can answer honestly that I never heard of them until now. Did you or the others see any such things during your travels?"

"¡Mierda!" he grunted. "In all those lands we came through, any mud-brick-and-straw village is called a city. That is the only kind we saw. Ugly and wretched and squalid and verminous and odorous."

"The friar was being most insistent in his questioning. When the three heroes protested ignorance of any such fabulous cities, it seemed to me that Fray Marcos almost suspected them of keeping something secret from him."

"He would, the reptile! When we were at Compostela, I was told that all men who know him call him El Monje Mentiroso. Naturally, the Lying Monk suspects everyone else of lying."

"Well... did any of the indios you encountered even hint at the existence of—?"

"¡Mierda más mierda!" he exclaimed, so loudly that I had to hiss at him again, for fear that someone would awaken. "If you must know, yes, they did. One day, when we were among the River People—we were being used as pack animals when they moved from one unlovely riverbend to another—our slave-drivers pointed off to the northward and told us that in that direction lay six great cities of the Desert People."

"Six," I repeated. "Not seven?"

"Six, but they were great cities. Meaning that to those estúpidos the cities probably each had more than a handful of mud houses and perhaps a dependable water hole."

"Not the wealth of that fabled Antilia?"

"Oh, but yes!" he said sarcastically. "Our river indios said that they traded animal hides and river shells and bird feathers with the inhabitants of those elegant cities, and got in return great riches. What they called 'riches' being only those cheap blue and green stones that all you indios so revere."

"Nothing, then, that would arouse the avarice of a Spaniard?"

"Will you hear me, man? We are talking of a desert!"

"So your companions are not withholding anything from the friar?"

"Withholding what? I was the only one who comprehended the indios' languages. My master Dorantes knows only what I translated to him. And that was little enough, for there was little to tell."

"But suppose... now... you were to take Fray Marcos aside and whisper to him that the white men are being secretive? That you know the whereabouts of really rich cities."

Esteban gaped at me. "Lie to him? What profit in lying to a man known as the Lying Monk?"

"It is my experience that liars are the persons most ready to believe lies. He already seems to believe in that fable of the Antilia cities."

"So? I tell him they do exist? And that I know where? Why would I do that?"

"As I suggested a while ago, so that you can return to those lands where you were not a slave—where you found the native women to your taste—and return there not as a fugitive."

"Hm..." murmured Esteban, considering this.

"Convince the friar that you can lead him to those cities of immeasurable wealth. He will be the more easily persuaded if he thinks you are revealing to him something the white heroes will not. He will assume that they are waiting to tell their secret to the Marqués Cortés. He will rejoice in the delusion that he can get to those riches—with your help—ahead of Cortés or any treasure-seekers Cortés may send. And he will arrange for you to take him there."

"But... when we get there and I have nothing to show him? Only laughable mud hutches and worthless blue pebbles and..."

"Now it is you, my friend, who are being estúpido. Lead him there and lose him. That should be easy enough. If he ever finds his way back here to New Spain, he can only report that you must have been slain by the vigilant guardians of those treasures."

Esteban's face began almost to glow, if black can glow. "I would be free..."

"It is certainly worth the trying. You need not even lie, if that troubles you. The friar's own greedy and dishonest nature will supply to his mind any exaggerations necessary to convince him."

"By God, I will do it! You, amigo, are a wise and clever man. You should be the Marqués of all New Spain!"

I made modest demurrers, but I must confess that I was fairly glowing myself, with pride in the intricate scheme I was setting in motion. Esteban, of course, did not know that I was using him to further my own secret plans, but that would not lessen his benefiting from the scheme. He would be free of any master, for the first time in his life, and free to take his chances of staying free among those far-off River People, and free to browse as much as he pleased—or dared—among their womenfolk.

I have recounted much of our night-long conversation in detail, because that will make clearer my explanation—which I will provide in its place—of how my meeting with the heroes and the friar did redound to the furtherance of my intended overthrow of the white men's dominion. And there was yet another encounter in store, to give me added encouragement. By the time Esteban and I finished talking, the morning was dawning, and with the morning came one more of those seeming coincidences that the gods, in their mischievous meddling with the doings of men, are forever contriving.

Four new Spanish soldiers on horseback came suddenly—from the direction Tiptoe and I had come—clattering into the camp and startling awake everyone else there. When I heard the news that they bawled at the Teniente Tallabuena, I was again heartily relieved; these men were not pursuing me and Tiptoe. Their horses were heavily lathered, so they had obviously been riding hard, and overnight. If they had passed that empty outpost away back yonder, they had not paused to pay it any attention.

"Teniente!" shouted one of the newcomers. "You are no longer under the command of that zurullón Guzmán!"

"Praise God for that," said Tallabuena, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "But why am I not?"

The rider swung down from his horse, flung its reins to a sleepy soldier and demanded, "Is there anything to eat? Our belt buckles are rattling our backbones! Ay, there is news from the capital, Teniente. The king has finally appointed a virrey to head the Audiencia of New Spain. A good man, this Viceroy Mendoza. One of the first things he did was to hear the many complaints against Nuño de Guzmán—his countless atrocities against the slave indios and Moros here. And one of Mendoza's first decrees is that Guzmán be removed from the governorship of New Galicia. We are galloping to Compostela to take him in charge and fetch him to the city for his punishment."

I could have heard nothing that would have pleased me more. The news-bringer paused to take a massive munch at a cold chunk of deer meat before he went on:

"Guzmán will be replaced by a younger man, one who came from Spain with Mendoza, un tal Coronado, who is on his way hither as we speak."

"¡Oye¡" exclaimed Fray Marcos. "Would that be Francisco Vásquez de Coronado?"

"It would," said the soldier, between bites.

"¡Qué feliz fortuna!" cried the friar. "I have heard of him, and heard only praise of him. He is a close friend of that Viceroy Mendoza, who is in turn a close friend of Bishop Zumárraga, who is in turn a close friend of mine. Also, this Coronado has recently made a most brilliant marriage to a cousin of King Carlos himself. Ay, but Coronado will wield power and influence here!"

The other Spaniards were shaking their heads at this abundance of news coming all at once, but I sidled out of the throng to where Esteban stood apart and said in a low voice:

"Things are looking better and better, amigo, for your soon getting back among those River People."

He nodded and said exactly what I was thinking. "The Lying Monk will persuade his friend, the bishop—and the bishop's friend, the viceroy—to send him thither, ostensibly as a missionary to the savages. Whether he tells the bishop and the viceroy why he is really going does not matter. So long as I go with him."

"And this new Governor Coronado," I added, "will be eager to make his mark. If you bring Fray Marcos by way of Compostela, I wager that Coronado will be most generous in providing horses and equipment and weapons and provisions."

"Yes," Esteban crowed. "I owe you much, amigo. I will not forget you. And if ever I am rich, be sure I shall share with you."

At that, he impulsively threw his arms around me and gave me the crushing squeeze that is called in Spanish the abrazo. A few of the Spaniards were watching, and I worried that they might wonder why I was being so exuberantly thanked, and for what. But then I had a more immediate worry. Over Esteban's shoulder, I saw that Tiptoe was also watching. Her eyes went wide, and abruptly she made a dash for our horses. I realized what she was about to do, and wrenched myself loose from the embrace and pelted after her. I got there just in time to prevent her snatching one of our arcabuces from the packs.

"No, Pakápeti! No need!"

"You are still unharmed?" she asked, her voice trembly. "I thought you were being assaulted by that black beast."

"No, no. You are a dear and caring girl, but overly impetuous. Please leave any rescuing to me. I will tell you later why I was being squeezed."

A good many of the Spaniards, now, were eyeing us curiously, but I smiled a reassuring smile in all directions, and they turned back to the news-bringers. One of those was telling his listeners:

"Another news, though not of such portentousness, is that Papa Paulo has established a new bishopric here in New Spain, the diocese of New Galicia. And he has elevated the Padre Vasco de Quiroga to a new and august station. Another of our couriers is riding to advise Padre Vasco that he is now to wear the miter, as Bishop Quiroga of New Galicia."

That announcement pleased me as much as any of the others I had heard here. But I did hope that Padre Vasco, now that he was such an important dignitary, would not forswear his good works and good intentions and good nature. No doubt Pope Paulo would expect his newest bishop to wring from those Utopia colonists yet more contributions to what Alonso de Molina had called the pope's "private King's Fifth." Be that as it may, this also augured well for my and Esteban's scheme. Probably Bishop Zumárraga would see Bishop Quiroga as a rival, and be even more ready to send Fray Marcos scouting either for new souls or new riches for Mother Church.

I purposely delayed departing from that place until the four newcome soldiers had gone galloping on toward Compostela. Then I bade farewell to Esteban and Teniente Tallabuena, and they and all their troop—except the three white heroes and the Lying Monk—cordially waved me off. When Tiptoe and I rode on, leading our two extra horses, I turned us slightly northward from the direction the soldiers had gone, in what I hoped was the direction of Aztlan.

XVII

Not many days later, we were among mountains that I recognized from the journey with my mother and uncle. It was still early in the rainy season, but on the day we reached the easternmost bounds of the lands ruled by Aztlan, the god Tlaloc and his attendant tlalóque spirits were amusing themselves by making a storm. They jabbed down from the skies their forked sticks of lightning and thunderously shattered their immense water jars to pour rain down on the earth. Through that curtain of rain, I espied the glow of a campfire on a hillside not far ahead of us. I halted our little train among some concealing trees and waited for a flare of lightning to show me more. When it did, I counted five men, standing or crouching around a fire sheltered by a lean-to made of leafy branches. The men all appeared to be wearing the quilted-cotton armor of Aztéca warriors, and seemed almost as if they had been put there to await our coming. If they were, I thought, this was a matter of some puzzlement, for how could anyone of Aztlan have known of our approach?

"Wait here, Tiptoe, with the horses," I said. "Let me make sure these are men of my people. Be prepared to turn and flee, if I signal that they are hostile."

I strode alone out into the downpour and up the hillside. As I neared the group, I raised both hands to show that I was without any weapon, and called, "Mixpantzínco!"

"Ximopanólti!" came the reply, sociably enough, and in the familiar accent of old Aztlan, good to hear again.

Another few steps and I was close enough to see—by the next lightning flash—the man who had replied. A familiar face from old Aztlan, but not one very pleasing to encounter again, because I well remembered what he was like. I imagine my voice reflected that, when I greeted him without much enthusiasm, "Ayyo, Cousin Yeyac."

"Yéyactzin," he haughtily reminded me. "Ayyo, Tenamáxtli. We have been expecting you."

"So it would seem," I said, glancing around at the four other warriors, all armed with obsidian-edged maquáhuime. I supposed they were his current cuilóntin lovers, but I did not remark on that. I said only, "How did you know I was coming?"

"I have my ways of knowing," said Yeyac, and a roll of thunder accompanying his words made them sound ominous. "Of course, I had no idea it was my own beloved cousin coming home, but the description was close enough, I see now."

I smiled, though I was not in a mood for smiling. "Has our great-grandfather again been exercising his talent for far-seeing, then?"

"Old Canaútli is long dead." To that announcement the tlalóque added another deafening smashing of water jars. When Yeyac could be heard, he demanded, "Now, where is the rest of your party? Your slave and the Spaniards' army horses?"

I was getting more and more disturbed. If Yeyac was not being advised by some Aztécatl far-seer, who was keeping him so well informed? I took note that he spoke of "Spaniards," not using the word Caxtiltéca that had formerly been Aztlan's name for the white men. And I remembered how, just recently, I had been made uneasy when I learned that the Governor Guzmán had set his province's capital city so close to ours.

"I am sorry to hear of great-grandfather's death," I said levelly. "And I am sorry, Cousin Yeyac, but I will report only to our Uey-Tecútli Mixtzin, not to you or any other lesser person. And I have much to report."

"Then report it here and now!" he barked. "I, Yéyactzin, am the Uey-Tecútli of Aztlan!"

"You? Impossible!" I blurted.

"My father and your mother never returned here, Tenamáxtli." I made some involuntary movement at that, and Yeyac added, "I regret having so many grievous tidings to impart"—but his eyes shifted away from mine. "Word came to us that Mixtzin and Cuicáni were found slain, apparently by bandits on the road."

This was desolating to hear. But if it was true that my uncle and mother were dead, I knew from Yeyac's manner that they had not died at the hands of any strangers. More lightning flashes and thunder roars and lashings of rain gave me time to compose myself, then I said:

"What of your sister and her husband—what was his name?—Káuri, yes. Mixtzin appointed them to rule in his stead."

"Ayya, the weakling Káuri," Yeyac sneered. "No warrior ruler, he. Not even a deft hunter. One day in these mountains he wounded a bear in the chase, and foolishly pursued it. The bear of course turned and dismembered him. The widow Améyatzin was content to retire to matronly pastimes and have me take on the burden of governing."

I knew that, too, to be untrue, because I knew Cousin Améyatl even better than I knew Yeyac. She would never willingly have yielded her position even to a real man, let alone this contemptible simulacrum whom she had always derided and despised.

"Enough of this dallying, Tenamáxtli!" Yeyac snarled. "You will obey me!"

"I will? Just as you obey the white Governor Guzmán?"

"No longer," he said, unthinking. "The new governor, Coronado—"

He shut his mouth, but too late. I knew all I needed to know. Those four Spanish riders had arrived in Compostela to arrest Guzmán, and they had mentioned meeting me and Tiptoe on their way. Perhaps, by then, they had begun to wonder about the legitimacy of my churchly "mission," and made their suspicions known. Whether Yeyac had been there in Compostela, or had heard the word later, no matter. He was clearly in league with the white men. What else this might mean—whether all of Aztlan and its native Aztéca and resident Mexíca had similarly donned the Spanish yoke—I would find out in good time. Right now, I had to contend only with Yeyac. In the next lull of the storm's commotion, I said warningly:

"Take care, man of no manhood." And I reached for the steel knife at my waist. "I am no longer the untried younger cousin you remember. Since we parted, I have killed—"

"No manhood?" he bellowed. "I too have killed! Would you be my next?"

His face was contorted with rage as he raised high his heavy maquáhuitl and stepped toward me. His four companions did the same, right behind him, and I backed away, wishing I had brought with me some weapon more formidable than a knife. But suddenly, all those menacing black blades of obsidian turned to glittering silver, because Tlaloc's lightning forks began to jab and jab and jab in rapid sequence, close about the six of us. I was not expecting the thing that happened next, though I was gratified and not very much surprised when it did happen. Yeyac took another step, but backward this time, reeling, and his mouth opened wide in a cry that went unheard in the immediately succeeding tumult of thunder, and he dropped his sword and fell heavily on his back with a great splash of mud.

There was no need for me to fend off his four underlings. They all stood immobile, maquáhuime lifted and streaming rainwater, as if the lightning had petrified them in that position. Their mouths were as wide open as Yeyac's, but in astonishment, awe and fright. They could not have seen, as I had, the bright, wet, red hole that had opened in the cotton quilting of Yeyac's belly armor, and none of us had heard the sound of the arcabuz that had done that. The four cuilóntin could only have assumed that I had, by some magic, called down upon their leader the forked sticks of Tlaloc. I gave them no time to think otherwise, but bawled, "Down weapons!"

They instantly and meekly lowered their blades. Such creatures, I surmised, must be like the frailest of women—easily cowed when they hear a real man's voice of command.

"This vile pretender is dead," I told them, giving the body a disdainful kick—I did that only to heave Yeyac over onto his face, so that they should not see the hole in his front and the bloodstain spreading from it. "I regret that I had to invoke the gods' assistance so suddenly. There were questions I would have asked. But the wretch gave me no choice." The four stared glumly at the corpse, and took no heed when I made a beckoning gesture back toward the trees, to summon Tiptoe forward. "Now," I went on, "you warriors will take orders from me. I am Tenamáxtzin, nephew of the late Lord Mixtzin, hence, by right of succession, from this moment on, the Uey-Tecútli of Aztlan."

But I could think of no order to give them, except to say, "Wait here for me." Then I sloshed back through the rain to intercept Tiptoe, as she came leading all our horses. I intended to tell her, before she joined us, to hide the arcabuz that she had so timely and so accurately employed. But when I got close, I saw that she had already prudently stowed it away again, so I said only, "Well done, Pakápeti."

"I was not too impetuous, then?" She had regarded my approach with some anxiety in her face, but now she smiled. "I was afraid you might scold me. But I did think that this one, too, was a beast attacking you."

"This time you were right. And you did splendidly. At such a distance, in such poor light—your skill is enviable."

"Yes," she agreed, with what I thought rather unwomanly satisfaction. "I have killed a man."

"Well, not much of a man."

"I would have done my best to kill the others, too, if you had not waved to me."

"They are of even less account. Save your man-hatred, my dear, until you can start killing enemies really worth the killing."

The sky's tlalóque were lustily continuing their clamor and downpour as I commanded the four warriors to sling Yeyac's cadaver across one of my packhorses—thus he was still facedown, the wound in his front invisible. Next, I ordered the four to accompany me as I rode, two each on either side of my horse; Tiptoe brought up the rear of the train as we proceeded onward. When there came a pause in the thunder rumblings, I leaned down from my saddle and said to the man trudging alongside my left stirrup:

"Give me your maquáhuitl." He meekly handed it up to me and I said, "You heard what Yeyac told me—of the several convenient deaths that so fortuitously promoted him to Uey-Tecútli of Aztlan. How much of what he said was true?"

The man coughed and temporized, "Your great-grandfather, our Rememberer of History, died of old age, as all men must, if they live to be old."

"I accept that," I said, "but it has nothing to do with Yeyac's marvelous quick elevation to the status of Revered Governor. I accept also that all men must die, but—I warn you—some must die sooner than others. What of those other deaths? Of Mixtzin and Cuicántzin and Káuritzin?"

"It was just as Yeyac told you," the man said, but his eyes shifted just as Yeyac's had done. "Your uncle and mother were set upon by bandits—"

He got no further. With a backhanded swipe of his own obsidian sword, I took his head off his shoulders, and both pieces of him toppled into a rain-running ditch beside the trail. In the next interval between thunderings, I spoke to the warrior at the other side of my saddle, who was goggling fearfully up at me like a frog about to be stepped on.

"As I said, some men must die sooner than others. And I do dislike to invoke the aid of Tlaloc, who is presently being very busy with this storm, when I can kill as easily myself." As if Tlaloc had heard me, the storm began to abate. "Now, what have you to tell me?"

The man stuttered for a moment, but finally said, "Yeyac lied, and so did Quani." He gestured back at the pieces in the ditch behind us. "Yéyactzin posted lookouts around the far outskirts of Aztlan, there to wait patiently to espy the return of Mixtzin and his sister—and yourself—from that journey to Tenochtítlan. When the two did return... well... there was an ambush awaiting them."

"That ambush," I said, "of whom did it consist?"

"Yeyac, of course. And his most favored favorite, Quani. The warrior you just now have slain. You are fully avenged, Tenamáxtzin."

"I doubt that," I said. "No two men of this One World, even striking cowardly from ambush, could have overwhelmed my uncle Mixtzin." And I slashed again with the maquáhuitl. Separately, the man's head flew and his body slumped into the sodden brush on that side of the trail. I turned again, and spoke to the remaining warrior walking on my left.

"I am still waiting to hear the truth. As you must have noticed, I do not wait long."

This one, almost babbling in his terror, assured me, "The truth, my lord, I kiss the earth to it. We were all guilty. Yeyac and we four laid the ambush. It was all of us together who fell upon your uncle and mother."

"And what of Káuri, the co-regent?"

"Not he nor anyone else in Aztlan knew the fate of Mixtzin and Cuicántzin. We cajoled Káuritzin into joining us on a bear hunt in the mountains. He did indeed, by himself and most manfully, spear and slay a bear. But we, in turn, killed Káuri, then employed the dead animal's teeth and claws to maul and tear at him. When we took his body and the bear's carcass home, his widow, your cousin Améyatzin, could hardly dispute our story that the beast had been responsible for his death."

"And then? Did you dastardly traitors kill her, as well?"

"No, no, my lord. She lives, I kiss the earth to that. But in seclusion now, no longer regent."

"Why? She would still have been expecting her father to return and resume his proper place. Why would she have abdicated her regency?"

"Who can say, my lord? Out of grief at her widowhood, perhaps? Out of deep mourning?"

"Nonsense!" I snapped. "If the deeps of Míctlan's oblivion yawned before her, Améyatzin would never shirk her duty. How did you make her do it? Torture? Rape? What?"

"Only Yeyac could tell you that. It was he alone who persuaded her. And you have put him beyond the telling. One thing, though, I can tell you." He said most haughtily, and with a fastidious sniff, "My lord Yéyactzin would never have sullied himself by raping or otherwise toying with the body of a mere female."

That remark infuriated me more than had all his comrades' lies, and my third slash of the obsidian sword cleft him from shoulder to belly.

On my other side, the sole surviving warrior had prudently sidled out of reach of my weapon, but he was also prudently eyeing the no-longer-raining but still ominously dark sky.

"You are wise not to run," I told him. "Tlaloc's forks are much longer than my arm. But be at ease. I am sparing you, for a time, at least. And for a reason."

"Reason?" he croaked. "What reason, my lord?"

"I wish you to tell me of everything that has occurred in Aztlan in the years since I left there."

"Ayyo, every least thing, my lord!" he said eagerly. "I kiss the earth to it. How shall I begin?"

"I already know that Yeyac befriended and colluded with the white men. So tell me first: are there any Spaniards in our city or its outer domains?"

"None, my lord, not anywhere in the Aztlan lands. Yeyac and we of his personal guard have frequently visited Compostela, true, but no white men have come north from there. The Spanish governor gave oath that Yeyac could continue his rule of Aztlan, undisputed, on only one single condition. That Yeyac bar any native marauders from making forays into the governor's lands."

"In other words," I said, "Yeyac was prepared to fight his own people of The One World on behalf of the white men. Did that ever come to pass?"

"Yes," said the warrior, trying to look unhappy about it. "On two or three occasions, Yeyac led troops whose loyalty to him personally was unwavering, and they... well... discouraged this or that small band of malcontents marching southward to make trouble for the Spaniards."

"When you say loyal troops, it sounds as if not all the warriors and inhabitants of Aztlan have been overjoyed to have Yeyac as their Uey-Tecútli."

"That is so. Most of the Aztéca—and Mexíca, too—much preferred to be ruled by Améyatzin and her consort. They were dismayed when the Lady Améyatl was deposed from her regency. They would, of course, be even better pleased to have Mixtzin back again. And they still expect his return, even after these many years."

"Do the people know of Yeyac's treacherous pact with the Spanish governor?"

"Very few know of it. Not even the elders of the Speaking Council. It is known only to us of Yeyac's personal guard, and those loyal troops of whom I spoke. And his closest, best-trusted adviser, a certain person newcome to these parts. But the people have accepted Yeyac's rule, if only grudgingly, because he claimed that he, and he only, could prevent an invasion of the white men. That, he has done. No resident of Aztlan has yet seen a Spaniard. Or a horse," the man added, glancing at mine.

"Meaning," I mused, "that Yeyac's keeping the Spanish free of molestation gives them time to increase their forces and weaponry unimpeded, until they are ready to come. Which they will. But wait—you spoke of a certain person giving advice to Yeyac. Who would that be?"

"Did I say a person, my lord? I should have said a woman."

"A woman?! Your late companion just now made it plain that Yeyac had no use for women in any capacity, even as victims."

"And this one has no use for men, I gather, though a man who favors women would probably find her most comely and personable. But she is truly sagacious in the arts of governing and strategy and expediency. That is why Yeyac willingly gave ear to her every counsel. It was at her urging that he originally made embassy to the Spanish governor. When we got word of your approach, I daresay she would have come with us to intercept you, except that she has charge of keeping your cousin Améyatl in close confinement."

"Let me hazard a conjecture," I said grimly. "This clever female's name is G'nda Ké."

"It is," said the man, surprised. "You have heard of her, my lord? Is the lady's reputation for sagacity as well known abroad as it now is in Aztlan?"

I growled, "She has a reputation, I will say that much."

The storm was gone, and most of the clouds, so the day was lightened by Tonatíu's serenely settling into the west, and I recognized where we were. The first scattered habitations and tilled lands of Aztlan's outskirts would soon be in sight. I beckoned for Pakápeti to bring her horse alongside mine.

"Before dark, my dear, you will be in the last remaining bastion of what was once the Aztéca dominion. A lesser but still proud and flourishing Tenochtítlan. I hope you will find it to your liking."

Curiously, she said nothing, only looked not at all anticipatory. I asked, "Why so downcast, dear Tiptoe?"

She said, sounding extremely peeved, "You could have let me kill at least one of those three men."

I sighed. It seemed that Pakápeti was becoming as unwomanly a woman as that terrible G'nda Ké. I turned again to the warrior at my right stirrup and asked, "What is your name, man?"

"I am called Nochéztli, my lord."

"Very well, Nochéztli. I want you to walk ahead of this train as we enter the city. I expect the populace will be coming out-of-doors to gaze upon us. You are to announce, loudly, over and over, that Yeyac has—deservedly—been struck dead by the gods who finally wearied of his treacheries. And that I, Tenamáxtzin, the legitimate successor, am arriving to take residence in the city palace as Aztlan's new Uey-Tecútli."

"I will do that, Tenamáxtzin. I have a voice that can bawl almost as loudly as Tlaloc's."

"Another thing, Nochéztli. As soon as I get to the palace, I shall doff this alien costume and don the proper regalia. While I am doing that, I want you to assemble Aztlan's entire army in the city's central square."

"My lord, I am only a tequíua in rank. I have not enough authority to order—"

"I here and now endow you with that authority. In any case, your fellows will probably assemble simply out of curiosity. I want every warrior there in the square, Aztéca and Mexíca, not only those who are professional men at arms, but also every able-bodied male of every other trade and profession who has been trained for combat and is subject to conscription in time of war. See to it, Nochéztli!"

"Er... excuse me, Tenamáxtzin, but some of those warriors lately loyal to Yeyac may well take to the hills at the news of their master's demise."

"We will hunt them down at our leisure. Just be sure you do not disappear, Nochéztli, or you will be the first hunted, and the manner of your execution will be a subject for legend forever after. I have learned things from the Spaniards that would horrify even the most vicious gods of punishment. I kiss the earth to that."

The man gulped audibly and said, "I am and will be yours to command, Tenamáxtzin."

"Good. Remain so, and you may yet live to die of old age. Once the army is assembled, you will go among the men and mark for me every one, of highest rank or lowest, who joined Yeyac in his groveling to the Spaniards. Later, we shall do the same with the rest of Aztlan's citizenry. You will mark for me every man and woman—respected elder or priest or meanest slave—who has ever in the least collaborated with Yeyac or been the beneficiary of his patronage."

"Excuse me again, my lord, but chief among those would be the woman G'nda Ké, who is right now in residence at the palace you intend to occupy. She guards the chamber allotted to the captive Lady Améyatl."

"I know well enough how to deal with that creature," I said. "You find the others for me. But now—here are the first huts of outer Aztlan, and the people are emerging to get a look at us. Move to the fore, Nochéztli, and do as I bade you."

Somewhat to my surprise—he being a cuilóntli and presumably effeminate in nature—Nochéztli could bellow like the male animal the Spanish call a toro. And he bellowed what I had told him to say, and he did so again and again, and the eyes and mouths of the watching people gaped wide. Many of those folk fell in behind our little train, so Nochéztli and I and Pakápeti were leading quite a procession by the time we got to the paved streets of the city proper at nightfall—and we had a veritable throng behind us as we crossed the torch-lit central square to the wall-enclosed palace.

At either side of the wall's broad, open portal stood a warrior guardsman, wearing full quilted armor and the fanged fur helmet of the knightly Jaguar order, each man armed with maquáhuitl sword, belt knife and long spear. According to custom, they should have crossed those spears to bar our entry until our business was made known. But these two men merely gawked at us curiously garbed strangers, our strange animals and the hordes of people filling the square. They were understandably uncertain what to do in these circumstances.

I leaned around my horse's neck to inquire of Nochéztli, "These two, were they Yeyac's men?"

"Yes, my lord."

"Kill them."

The two knights stood unresisting, but bravely unflinching, as Nochéztli wielded his own obsidian sword—slashing left, then right—and felled them like so much peskily obstructive underbrush. The crowd behind us gave a concerted gasp, and moved back a step or two.

"Now, Nochéztli," I said, "summon a few strong men from this mob and dispose of these carrion." I indicated the fallen guards and Yeyac's body, still draped across one of the packhorses. "Next, bid the crowd disperse, on pain of my displeasure. Then do as I commanded—assemble the army in this square to await my inspection, as soon as I am formally attired in gold and gems and plumage as their chief commander."

When the cadavers had been removed, I beckoned for Pakápeti to follow, and without dismounting—our other two horses at trail—we rode like conquerors, arrogantly, into the courtyard of the splendid palace of the Revered Governor of Aztlan, henceforward the palace of the Uey-Tecútli Téotl-Tenamáxtzin. Myself.