Aztec Autumn

XXVII

My heart was so heavy and my thoughts so melancholy that I felt no alarm, scarcely even noticed, when the islands sank out of sight behind me and I was again alone on the fearsomely empty open sea. What I was thinking was this:

"It seems that I somehow confer a curse upon all the women toward whom I feel love or even affection. The gods cruelly take them away, and cruelly leave me alive, to live with regret and grief."

And this: "But ayya, when I bemoan my bereavement, I am being callously selfish, because what happened to Ixínatsi and Pakápeti and Citláli was so much worse. They lost the whole world and all their tomorrows."

And this: "Ever since childhood, my cousin Améyatl and I have been merely fond of one another, yet she nearly died of imprisonment and degradation."

And this: "The little mulata girl Rebeca and I considered one another only an experiment. But, when she went from my arms into a convent's suffocating confinement, she too could be said to have lost the world and all her tomorrows."

Thus it was that, then and there, I made a decision. I would live the kind of life, from now on, that would be most prudent—and most considerate of every woman remaining in The One World. I would never again let myself be lured into love of any of them, or let any of them love me. For myself, the remembrances of the idyll I had shared with Cricket would sustain me for the rest of my days. For the women, I would be doing a mercy, not endangering them with whatever was the curse I carried with me.

If, when I got ashore at Yakóreke and walked north to Aztlan, I should find the city still intact and Améyatl still ruling there, I would decline her suggestion that we wed and reign side by side. Henceforth, I would devote myself entirely to the war I had instigated, and to the extermination or expulsion of the white men. I would let no woman, ever again, into my heart, my life. If and when my physical needs got overwhelmingly urgent, I could always find some female to use, but that would be all she would mean to me—a handy yet disposable receptacle. I would never love again; I would never be loved again.

And in all the time since I swore that vow to myself in the vast expanses of the Western Sea, I have kept steadfast to that oath. Or I did until I found you, querida Verónica. But again I get ahead of my chronicle.

While I thought those thoughts, I was occupied with something else as well. I cut small slits in the inner skin of the sea-cuguar mantle Cricket had made for me—sixty-five slits—and in each of them secreted one of the pearls I carried, and sewed them invisibly there, using the bone hook and fishing line Cricket had provided. What with my preoccupation of mind and hands, I was often neglecting to paddle as steadily as I had been instructed, and forgetful of the fact that the sea's current was carrying my acáli farther southward than I should have let it do.

In consequence, when at last the mainland came into view on the eastern horizon, I saw there no Yakóreke or any other village. Well, small matter. At least I was back on the solid ground of The One World, and I did not much mind having a longer journey to make along the coast to Aztlan. As I neared the shore, I saw a beach on which several rough-clad men of my own complexion were busily engaged at some employment I could not make out, so I steered my craft toward them. When I got closer, I could see that they were fishermen, mending their nets. They all dropped their work to watch me wade and drag my acáli up onto the sand among their own acáltin, but they did not seem overly surprised at seeing a rather luxuriously mantled stranger suddenly appear out of nowhere.

When I called "Mixpantzínco!" to them and they replied with "Ximopanólti!" I was relieved to hear them speak Náhuatl. It meant that I was still somewhere in the Aztéca regions, and had not drifted into totally unfamiliar lands.

I introduced myself only as "Tenamáxtli," without elaboration, but one of the men was uncommonly acute and well informed for a mere fisherman. He asked:

"Would you be that same Tenamáxtli who is cousin to Améyatzin, the lady of Aztlan who once was wed to the late lord Káuritzin of our own Yakóreke?"

"I am he," I admitted. "So you are men of Yakóreke?"

"Yes, and rumor reached us long ago that you are traveling over all The One World on some mission in behalf of that lady and our late lord."

"In behalf of all our peoples," I said. "You will soon hear more than rumors. But tell me. What are you doing here? I know not where I have landed, exactly, but I know it is south of the Yakóreke fishing grounds."

"Ayya, there were too many of us crowding the waters there. So we few wandered hither to try our fortunes and—ayyo!—found abundant nettings and a new market for them. We supply the white residents of the town they call Compostela, and they pay handsomely. It is yonder"—he pointed due east—"only a few one-long-runs."

I realized that I had veered farther off course than I had supposed. I was uncomfortably close to those same Spaniards from whom I had escaped. But all I said to the fishermen was, "Do you not worry that you will be snatched into slavery when you go there?"

"For a wonder, no, Tenamáxtli. The soldiers have lately ceased to exert themselves to impound slaves. And the man called the gobernador seems even to have lost interest in grubbing silver from the earth. He is busy equipping his soldiers—and gathering others from other places—in preparation for some grand expedition to the northward. As best we can discover, he is not marching against Yakóreke or Tépiz or Aztlan or any other of our communities still free of subjugation. It will not be an expedition of raiding or conquering or occupying. But whatever he is planning, it has caused a fever of excitement in the town. The gobernador has even relinquished the governing of Compostela to a man called an obispo, and that one seems leniently disposed toward us unwhite persons. We are let freely to come and go and peddle our fish and set our own prices."

Well, this was interesting news. The expedition certainly must have something to do with those mythical rich Cities of Antilia. And the bishop had to be my old acquaintance Vasco de Quiroga. I was meditating on how to turn these matters to my advantage, when the fisherman spoke again:

"We shall be sorry to leave here."

"Leave?" I asked. "Why leave?"

"We must return to Yakóreke. The time approaches for all us sea-fishers to embark upon our annual oyster-harvesting."

I smiled reminiscently, and more than a little sadly, thinking, "Ayyo, happy men!" But what I said was, "If you are going north again, friends, would one of you do a favor for me—and for the widow of your late Káuritzin?"

"Assuredly. What would that be?"

"Go the twelve one-long-runs farther north—to Aztlan. It has been a very long time since I was last there, and my cousin Améyatl may be thinking that I have died. Simply tell her that you saw me, that I am in good health and still pursuing my mission. That I hope shortly to be bringing it to fruition, and once I have accomplished that, I will report to her in Aztlan."

"Very well. Anything else?"

"Yes. Give her this fur mantle. Tell her that—just in case my mission should fail somehow, and she should find herself imperiled by the white men or any other enemy—this mantle will afford her lifelong sustenance and protection."

The man looked puzzled. "A simple sea-doe skin? How?"

"A very special sea-doe skin. There is magic in it. Améyatl will discover that magic when and if she needs it."

The man shrugged. "As you say. Consider it done, Tenamáxtli."

I thanked them all, said good-bye and set off inland, toward Compostela.

I was not particularly apprehensive of danger in so boldly returning to the town from which I had made my rather memorable escape. Of those who might recognize and denounce me, Yeyac and G'nda Ké were dead. Coronado was apparently being too busy to be paying much heed to stray indios in his streets. And so, presumably, was that Fray Marcos, if he was in residence. Nevertheless, I remembered the piece of advice I had been given long ago—carry something and look purposeful. In the slave-quarter outskirts of the town I found a balk of timber, roughly square-hewn, lying unattended on the ground. I hefted it to my shoulder and pretended it was heavy, so I could walk hunched over a bit, to disguise my tallness.

Then I made for the center of the town, where stand its only two stone-built structures, the palace and the church. The palace had its usual guards at the entrance, but they paid me no notice as I slouched past. At the church's unguarded door, I dropped the timber, went inside and accosted the first shaven-pated Spaniard I saw. I told him, in Spanish, that I brought a message from his superior's fellow bishop, Zumárraga. The monk eyed me somewhat askance, but he went away somewhere, came back and beckoned, and led me to the bishop's chambers.

"Ah, Juan Británico!" cried that good and trusting old man. "It has been a long time, but I would have known you on sight. Be seated, dear fellow, be seated. What a pleasure to see you again!" He called to a servant to bring refreshments, then went on, not a whit suspiciously, "Still doing Bishop Zumárraga's evangel work among the unconverted, eh? And how is my old friend and colleague Juanito? You say you bring a message from him?"

"Er, he thrives and prospers, Your Excellency." Padre Vasco was the only white man to whom I would ever accord that title of respect. "And his message—er, well..." I glanced around; this church was far inferior to Zumárraga's in the City of Mexíco. "He expresses the hope, Your Excellency, that you will soon have a house of worship befitting your high station."

"How kind of Juanito! But surely His Excellency knows that a grand cathedral is already being planned for New Galicia."

"Perhaps he does, by now," I said lamely. "But I, what with my constant traveling..."

"Ah, then rejoice with me, my son! Yes, it will be built in the province your people call Xalíscan. There is a fine new town rising there, currently called by the native name of Tonalá, but I think that name will be changed to Guadalajara, to honor the city in Old Spain whence originated the house of Mendoza. Our viceroy's family, you know."

I asked, "And how fare your Utopia communities around the Lake of Rushes?"

"Better than I might have expected," he said. "All about that area have occurred uprisings of disaffected Purémpecha. Of Purémpe women, can you imagine that? Amazonas, they are—vicious and vindictive. They have caused many deaths and much damage and every sort of pilferage among the Spanish settlements. But, for what reason I know not, they have spared our little Eden."

"They probably recognize and esteem you, padre, as an exemplary Christian," I lied, but with no irony intended. "Why did you leave there?"

"His Excellency the Governor Coronado had need of me here. He will shortly be undertaking a venturesome journey that could greatly increase the wealth of all New Spain. And he asked me to administer the governing of Compostela in his absence."

"Excuse me, my lord," I said, "but you sound not entirely approving of that venture."

"Well... mere wealth..." said the bishop with a sigh. "Don Francisco aspires to the stature of the earlier conquistadores. And with the same rallying cry: 'Glory, God and gold.' I only wish he would put God first. He will be journeying—not as you do, Juan Británico, to evangelize for Holy Mother Church—but to find and plunder some far-off and reputedly treasure-filled cities."

Feeling a twinge of shame at my imposture, I murmured, "I have traveled far and wide, but I know of no such cities."

"It seems that they do exist, though. A certain friar was led to them by a Moro slave who had been there before. The good Fray Marcos has but recently returned, with his soldier escorts but without the slave. Fray Marcos affirms that he saw the cities—they are called the Cities of Cíbola, he says—but he saw them only from a distance, because they are of course vigilantly guarded against discovery. He had to turn back when that poor loyal slave guide was slain by the guardian savages. But the staunch and valiant friar is now about to lead Coronado there, this time with an invincible host of armed soldiers."

It was the first time I had ever heard any human being say a commendatory word for the Lying Monk. And I was willing to wager that Esteban was still alive, at liberty now, and that he would likely spend the rest of his life—when he was not enjoying the desert women—laughing at his greedily gullible former masters.

"If the friar saw the cities only from a distance," I said, "how can he be sure they are full of treasures?"

"Oh, he saw the house walls gleaming, sheathed in gold, studded with sparkling gems. And he was close enough to descry the inhabitants walking about, clad in silks and velvets. These things he swears to. And Fray Marcos is, after all, bound by the vows of his order never to tell an untruth. It seems certain that Don Francisco will return from Cíbola in triumph, laden with riches, to be rewarded with fame and adulation and the favor of His Majesty. Still..."

"You would prefer that he brought souls instead," I suggested. "Converts to the Church."

"Well, yes. But I am not a pragmatic man of the world." He gave a little laugh of self-deprecation. "I am only an ingenuous old cleric, piously and unfashionably believing that our true fortunes await us in another world altogether."

I said, and sincerely, "All of Spain's vaunted conquistadores combined would not equal the worth of one Vasco de Quiroga."

He laughed again, and waved away the compliment. "Still, I am not the only one who questions the wisdom of the governor's hastening headlong toward that Cíbola. Many think it a rash and reckless venture—that it may work more harm than good to New Spain."

"How so?" I asked.

"He is collecting every soldier he can muster from the farthest corners of the land. And he needs not to conscript them. Everywhere, officers and rankers alike are pleading to be detached from their customary duties, in order to join Coronado. Even nonsoldiers, city merchants and country planters, are mounting and arming themselves to join. Every would-be hero and fortune hunter sees this as the opportunity of a lifetime. Also, Coronado is collecting remount horses for his troopers, packhorses and mules, extra arms and ammunition, every other kind of supplies, indio and Moro slaves to be bearers and drovers, even herds of cattle to be provisions along the way. He is seriously weakening the defenses of New Spain, and the people are worried about this. The depredations of those Purémpe Amazonas here in New Galicia are well known, and the frequent sallies of savages across our northern frontiers, and there have been distressingly bloody incidents of unrest even among the prisoners and slaves in our mines and mills and obrajes. The people fear, with good reason, that Coronado is leaving all of New Spain uncomfortably vulnerable to despoliation, both from without and within."

"I can see that," I said, trying not to sound pleased, though nothing could have pleased me more to hear. "But the viceroy in the City of Mexíco—that Señor Mendoza—does he also regard Coronado's project as folly?"

The bishop looked troubled. "As I said, I am not a pragmatic man. But I can recognize expediency when I see it. Coronado and Don Antonio de Mendoza are old friends. Coronado is married to a cousin of King Carlos. Mendoza is also a friend of Bishop Zumárraga, and he, I fear, is ever too ready to endorse any venture calculated to please and enrich King Carlos—and endear himself to the king and the pope, may God forgive me for saying so. Marshal all those facts, Juan Británico. Is it likely that anyone, high or low, will speak to Coronado a discouraging word?"

"Certainly not I," I said lightly, "and I am lowest of the low." The worm in the coyacapúli fruit, I thought, long having eaten from within, now about to hurst the fruit asunder. "I thank you for your graciousness in receiving me, Your Excellency, and for the refreshing cakes and wine, and I ask your leave to be on my way."

Still being more decent to a lowly indio than any other white man I ever met, Padre Vasco cordially urged me to remain awhile—to reside under his roof, to attend services, to make confession, to take communion, to converse at greater length—but I lied some more, telling him that I had instructions to hurry and "bear the message" to a still unregenerate pagan tribe some distance away.

Well, it was not entirely a lie. I did have a message to deliver, and at a considerable distance. I left Compostela, not having to sneak this time, no one paying any attention to me at all, and went briskly toward Chicomóztotl.

"Thanks be to Huitzilopóchtli and every other god!" exclaimed Nochéztli. "You have come at last, Tenamáxtzin, not a moment too soon. I have here the most numerous army ever assembled in The One World, every man of it impatiently stamping his feet to be on the march, and I have been barely able to hold them in check, awaiting your orders."

"You have done well, faithful knight. I have just come through the Spanish lands, and clearly no one there has any inkling of this gathering storm."

"That is good. But, among our own people, the word must have been passed from mouth to ear to mouth. We have acquired far more recruits than the many we enlisted from the lands hereabout, and the very many who came from the north, wave after wave of them, saying you had sent them. For example, all those women warriors from Michihuácan have made their way hither. They say they are tired of inflicting merely skirmish attacks on Spanish properties; they want to be with us when we march in force. Also there are countless runaway slaves—indios and Moros and mixtures of breeds—escaped from mines and plantations and obrajes, who have managed to find this place. They are even more avid than the rest of us to wreak havoc on their masters, but I have had to put them to special training, because few have ever even held a weapon before."

"Every man counts," I said, "and every woman. Can you tell me how many we have, in total?"

"As best I can estimate, a hundred of hundreds. A formidable host, in truth. They long ago overflowed the seven caverns here and are camped all over these mountains. Since they hail from so many different nations and perhaps a hundred different tribes within those nations, I thought it best to assign and segregate their camping places according to their origins. Many of them, as you doubtless know, have been for ages inimical to one another—or to every other. I did not want an intestine war erupting here."

"Very astute management, Knight Nochéztli."

"However, the very variety of our forces makes the management of them most complicated. I have delegated my best fellow knights and under-officers, each to be responsible for one or another mass of warriors. But their orders, instructions, reprimands, whatever, given in the Náhuatl tongue, can be given only to those tribal chief warriors who can understand Náhuatl. Those, in turn, must relay the words to their men in their language. And then the words must be passed along to the next tribe, who may speak a different dialect of the same language, but can at least be made to understand. And then they somehow transmit the words to yet another tribe. Probably one man in every hundred of all these hundreds spends a good part of his time acting as interpreter. And of course the commands frequently get contorted down the course of that long process, which has made for some marvelous misunderstandings. It has not quite happened yet, but one of these days, when I form a contingent of our men into ranks and give the command to the first rank, 'Stand to arms!' and the command is passed along, the men in the last rank are going to hear it as 'Lie down and go to sleep!' As for those Yaki you sent, none of us can communicate with them. They would not understand if I did order them to go to sleep."

I had to stifle a smile at Nochéztli's overflow of exasperation. But I was proud and admiring of the way he had handled the vast army under those difficult conditions, and told him so.

"Well, so far," he said, "I have been able to keep all the men from getting too restive, and from quarreling among themselves, by giving them orders that can be conveyed—even to the Yaki—with gestures and demonstrations instead of words, and thus keeping them all occupied with various labors. Appointing certain groups to do the hunting and fishing and gathering of food, for instance, others to do the burning of charcoal, the mixing of pólvora, the casting of lead balls and so on. Those couriers you sent to Tzebóruko and to Aztlan did return with ample supplies of the yellow azufre and the bitter salitre. So we now have as much powder and as many balls as we can carry when we leave here. I am pleased to report, too, that we have many more of the thunder-sticks than before. The Purémpe women brought many that they captured from the Spaniards in New Galicia, and so did numerous warriors of the northern tribes who stole them from Spanish army outposts as they came hither through the Disputed Lands. We now have nearly a hundred of those weapons, and about twice that many men who have become expert at using them. We have also acquired a goodly armory of steel knives and swords."

"This is all most gratifying to hear," I said. "Have you anything not so gratifying to report?"

"Only that we are better supplied with armament than with food. Given a hundred of hundreds of mouths to be fed, well, you can imagine. Our hunters and foragers have by now killed every last animal and bird and plucked every fruit, nut and edible green from all these mountains, and emptied the waters of every last fish. I had to set a limit to their foraging, you see, not let them go too far abroad, lest word of their activity reach the wrong ears. But you may wish to countermand that order, Tenamáxtzin, for we are now reduced to scant rations indeed—roots and tubers and frogs and insects. Such deprivation is of course beneficial for warriors. It makes them lean and hard and eager to reap from the fat lands we will be invading. However, besides the Purémpe women now among us, a good number of those runaway slaves who fled here are women and children. I hate to sound like a woman myself, but I do feel sorry for those weaker ones who came trusting that we would care for them. I hope, my lord, that you will give instant order for us all to march from here into more bounteous lands."

"No," I said. "That order I will not give yet, and I will not countermand any of yours, even if we all must live for a time by chewing the leather of our own sandals. And I will tell you why."

Thereupon, I repeated to Nochéztli everything the Bishop Quiroga had confided to me, and added:

"This, then, is my first order. Send sharp-eyed and fleet-footed men west from here. One is to be posted, well hidden, beside every road, every trail, every deer path that wends northward from Compostela. When Governor Coronado passes with his train, I want a count of his men, his arms, his horses, mules, bearers, packs—everything he is taking with him. We will not attack that train, because the foolish man is doing us a favor immeasurable. When I have the report that he and his fellows have passed, and when I judge they have gone far enough north, then—but not until then—will we move. You concur, Knight Nochéztli?"

"But of course, my lord," he said, wagging his head in wonderment. "What astonishingly good fortune for us, and what astonishingly imbecilic behavior on the part of Coronado. He leaves the field wide open for us."

It was immodest of me, but I could not help saying, "I flatter myself that I had some small part, a long while ago, in arranging both the good fortune and the imbecility. I sought for years to find the one pregnable gap in the white men's seeming invulnerability. It is greed."

"That reminds me," said Nochéztli. "I almost forgot to mention another astonishing thing. Among those fugitives who came seeking sanctuary with us are two white men."

"What?" I said, incredulous. "Spaniards fleeing their own kind? Turning against their own kind?"

Nochéztli shrugged. "I do not know. They seem very peculiar Spaniards. Even those few of us Aztéca who have some words of Spanish cannot understand the Spanish they try to speak to us. But the two of them jabber between themselves with noises like geese honking and hissing." He paused, then added, "I have heard that the Spanish are forbidden by their religion to do away with any children born deficient of brain. Perhaps these are two of those defectives, grown to man-size, not knowing what they are doing."

"If so, we will do away with them rather than feed them. I will have a look at them later. In the meantime, speaking of feeding, may I request a meal—of whatever grubs and thorns may be the fare today?"

Nochéztli grinned. "We would be as foolish as the white men if we starved and weakened our lord commander. I have some smoked deer parts put by."

"I thank you. And while I feast on those viands, send me whichever officer you have appointed leader of those Purémpe women."

"They have their own—a woman. They refused to be ordered about by any man."

I should have known. The leader was that same cóyotl-faced woman with the inappropriate name of Butterfly. To forestall her trying to bully me, I congratulated her on being still alive, and on the many successful forays she had led against the whites in New Galicia, and thanked her for having spared the Utopia communities, as I had asked. Butterfly preened at being so fulsomely praised, and looked even more appreciative when I said:

"I want to arm your gallant contingent of women warriors with a special weapon all your own. Also, it is a weapon that can best be made by women, whose fingers are more delicate and nimble and precise than any man's."

"Only command us, Tenamáxtzin."

"It is a weapon that I invented myself, though the Spaniards have something similar, and call it a granada."

I explained how to wrap clay tightly around a packing of pólvora, and insert into it a thin poquíetl for a wick, and bake the thing to hardness in the sun.

"Then, when we go into battle, my lady Butterfly, have each of your women go smoking a poquíetl herself and carrying several of those granadas. Whenever opportunity offers, ignite the wick of a granada and throw it at the enemy or—better yet—inside their houses or guard posts or fortresses. You will see some spectacular damage done."

"It sounds delightful, my lord. We will get to work on them straightaway."

When I had done gnawing on the deer meat, drinking some octli and smoking a poquíetl myself, I called for those two "peculiar" white men to be brought before me.

Well, they turned out to be neither Spanish nor defective, though it took me a confusing while to figure that out. One of the men was considerably older than myself, the other a little younger. Both were as white and hairy as Spaniards, but, like all the other slaves now in our encampment, barefooted and dressed in tatters. They had evidently, somehow, been made aware that I was chief of all the people assembled here, so they approached me respectfully. As Nochéztli had said, they spoke very imperfect Spanish, but we managed mostly to understand each other. However, they sprinkled their converse with words that I can hope only to approximate here, for they did sound like goose talk.

I introduced myself in Spanish simple enough for even a defective to comprehend. "I am called by you Spanish folk Juan Británico. What are you—?"

But the older one interrupted, "John British?!" and both of them stared at me, wide-eyed, then quacked excitedly at one another. I could catch only repetitions of that word British.

"Please," I said, "speak Spanish, if you can."

So they did, mostly, from then on. But in my recounting of that conversation, I am making them sound much more fluent than they were, and also I am doing my best to pronounce the frequent goose words.

"Your pardon, John British," said the elder of the two. "I was saying to Miles here that, by the blood, we are finally having a run of—a run of what we call luck—a run of buena suerte. You must be a castaway, same as us. But Miles said, and so do I—begod, Cap'n, you do not appear to be British."

"Whatever that is, I am not," I said. "I am Aztécatl—you would say indio—and my name is properly Téotl-Tenamáxtli." Both men looked at me with faces as blank as only white faces can be. "None but the Spanish call me by the Christian name of Juan Británico."

Some more honking and hissing went on between them, the word Christian occurring several times. The elder turned again to me.

"At least you are a Christian indio, then, Cap'n. But would you be one of these damned crossback Papists? Or would you be good Bishop's-Book Church of England?"

"I am not any kind of Christian!" I snapped. "And I am asking the questions here. Who are you?"

He told me, and it was my turn to look blank. The names could as well have been Yaki as goose. They certainly were not Spanish.

"Here," he said. "I can write." He looked about for a sharp stone, while saying, "I am a ship's sea-artist, I am. What the Spaniards call a navegador. Miles is only fo'c'sle, and ignorant." With the stone, he scratched in the earth at my feet, which is why I can accurately render the names here, JOB HORTOP—"That is me"—and MILES PHILIPS—"That is him."

He had mentioned ships and sea, so I asked, "Are you in the sea service of King Carlos?"

"King Carlos?!" they bellowed together, and the younger one added indignantly, "We serves good King Henry of England, bless his brass ballocks. And that, God damn it, is why we are here where we are at!"

"Pardon him, John British," said the elder. "Common seamen got no manners."

"I have heard of England," I said, remembering what Padre Vasco had once told me. "Are you perhaps acquainted with Don Tomás Moro?" Blank looks again. "Or his book about Utopia?"

The sea-artist sighed and said, "Your pardon again, Cap'n. I can read and write, some. But I never read no books."

I sighed, too, and said, "Please just tell me how you come to be here."

"Aye aye, sir. What happened, see, we shipped on a Hawkins merchantman out of Bristol, sailing under Genoese patent to take a cargo of ebony—you know what I mean—the middle passage from Guinea to Hispaniola. Well, we got as far as Tortoise Island. A storm wrecked us on them reefs, and me and Miles was the only ones of the white crew that washed ashore alive, along with numerous of the ebony. The damned piratical Jack Napeses there took us slaves, same as they did the blacks. We been passed from hand to hand ever since—Hispaniola, Cuba—wound up picking oakum in a Vera Cruz dockyard. When a bunch of the blackamoor slaves busted loose, we come with them. No place to aim for, but the blacks got word that some rebels was mustering in these mountains. So here we are, Cap'n. Rebels against them firking Spanish we be, by damn, if you will have us. And happy we will be, me and Miles, to kill every whoreson Jack Napes you can point us at. Just give us a cutlass apiece."

Not much of that made any sense to me, except the last part, at which I said:

"If you mean you wish to fight beside us, very well, you will be given weapons. Now, since I am the only person in this army who can—even toilsomely—understand and be understood by you..."

"Your pardon again, John British. A good many of them slaves yonder—blacks and indios and mongrels too—speaks the Spanish better than we does. One little half-breed wench, she can even read and write it."

"Thank you for telling me. That one may be useful when I want to send some Spanish city a declaration of siege, or dictate terms of its surrender. Meanwhile, I being the only commander in this army who can speak to you, I suggest that, when we go into battle, you both stay close to me. Also, since your names come hard to my tongue—and in battle I may have to speak them with urgency—I shall call you Uno and Dos."

"We been called worse names," said Dos. "And please, sir, can we call you Cap'n John? Make us feel at home, like."

XXVIII

The man Coronado... passed me... six days ago..." the runner gasped, as he sank wearily to his knees and elbows on the ground before me, his body heaving for breath and streaming with sweat.

"Then why," I demanded angrily, "has it taken you so long to report here?"

"You wanted... a count... my lord," he panted. "Four days counting... two days running..."

"By Huitztli," I murmured, now sympathetically, and I patted the man's wet, trembling shoulder. "Rest, man, before you speak more. Nochéztli, send for water and some kind of food for this warrior. He has been hard at his duty for six days and nights."

The man drank gratefully but, being an experienced swift-runner, drank only sparingly at first, then tore voraciously at the stringy deer meat. As soon as he could speak coherently and uninterrupted by gasps, he said:

"First came the man Coronado and beside him a man in priest-black garb, both mounted on fine white horses. Behind them came many mounted soldiers, four by four where the path was wide enough, more often two by two, because Coronado chose a trail not much traveled, hence not much cleared. Every horseman, except that one in black, wore the metal helmet and full metal and leather armor, every man carrying a thunder-stick and steel sword. Every mounted man led behind him one or two more horses besides. Then there came more soldiers, similarly armored, but these on foot, carrying thunder-sticks and long, wide-bladed spears. Here, my lord—the count of all those soldiers."

He handed me three or four grape leaves from a bunch he had brought, and on them were white marks scratched by a sharp twig. I was pleased to see that the runner knew how to count properly—the dots for ones, the little flags for twenties, the little trees for hundreds. I handed the leaves to Nochéztli and said, "Sum up the total for me."

The runner went on to tell that the column was so long and populous, and moving only at a walking pace, that it was four days in passing his hiding place. Though it stopped each night and made rough camp, he dared not sleep himself, for fear of missing anyone or anything that Coronado might have ordered to proceed secretly in the dark. At intervals during his story, the runner handed me more leaves—"the count of the horses for riding, my lord" and "the count of the horses and other beasts bearing packs" and "the count of the unarmored men—some white, some black, some indio—herding the animals or bearing packs themselves" and finally "the count of the horned beasts called cattle, which brought up the end of the column."

I handed each leaf tally in turn to Nochéztli, then said, "Swift-runner, you have done exceedingly well. What is your name and rank?"

"I am Pozonáli, my lord, and I am only a yaoquízqui recruit."

"No longer. Henceforth you are an iyac. Go you now, Iyac Pozonáli, and eat and drink and sleep your fill. Then take you a woman—any Purémpe or any slave, your choice, and tell her it is by my command. You deserve the best refreshment we can accord you."

Nochéztli had been shuffling the grape leaves and muttering to himself. Now he said:

"If the count is correct, Tenamáxtzin, and I can vouch for Pozonáli's reputation for reliability, this defies belief. Here is what I make the totals. Besides Coronado and the friar, two hundreds plus fifty of mounted soldiers, with six hundreds plus twenty of riding horses. Another seventy and four of soldiers afoot. Fully ten hundreds of pack animals. Another ten hundreds of those unarmored men—slaves, bearers, drovers, cooks, whatever they are. And four hundreds plus forty of cattle." He concluded, a little wistfully, "I envy the Spaniards all that fresh meat on the hoof."

I said, "We can assume that Coronado took with him only the most experienced officers and best-trained men available, and the best horses, and even the strongest and most loyal slaves. Also the newest and best-made arcabuces, the swords and spears of stoutest and sharpest steel. And many of those packs would have been full of pólvora and lead. It means that he has left New Galicia—perhaps all this western end of New Spain—garrisoned only with discards and dregs of the soldiery, all of them probably ill-supplied with weapons and the charges for them, all of them also probably ill at ease, since they are under the command of officers Coronado thought unfit for his expedition." Half to myself, I added, "The fruit is ripe."

Still wistfully, Nochéztli said, "Even a fruit would taste good, about now."

I laughed and said, "I agree. I am as hungry as you are. We shall delay no longer. If the tail of that long procession is already two days north of us, and we go south, there is not much likelihood that Coronado will get news of our move. Spread the word throughout the camps. We will march at tomorrow's dawn. Right now, send your hunters and foragers out ahead of us, so we can hope to have a decent meal tomorrow night. Also have all your knights and other leading officers attend me for their instructions."

When those men—and the one female officer, Butterfly—were assembled, I told them:

"Our first objective will be a town called Tonalá, southeast of here. I have information that it is growing fast, attracting many Spanish settlers, and that a cathedral is planned to be built there."

"Excuse me, Tenamáxtzin," said one of the officers. "What is a cathedral?"

"A tremendous temple of the white men's religion. Such great temples are erected only in places that are expected to become great cities. Thus I believe that the town of Tonalá is intended to replace Compostela as the Spaniards' capital city of New Galicia. We will do our utmost to discourage that intention—by destroying, leveling, obliterating that Tonalá."

The officers all nodded and grinned at each other in gleeful anticipation.

"When we approach that place," I went on, "our army will halt while scouts steal out around the town. When they report back to me, I will decide the disposition of our forces for the assault. Meanwhile, I also want scouts preceding us on the way there. Ten of them, alert Aztéca men, fanned out well ahead of our column. If they espy any kind of settlement or habitation in our path, even a hermit's hut, I am to be told immediately. If they encounter anyone at all, of whatever color, even a child out picking mushrooms, I want that person brought immediately to me. Go now. Make sure those orders are understood by all."

I do not know—once our column was on the march and strung out behind me—how many days it would have been in passing any given point. We numbered nearly eight times as many people as Coronado was leading, but we did not have his herds of horses, mules and cattle. We possessed only the same two unsaddled horses that Nochéztli had retrieved from the long-ago ambush outside Compostela. He and I rode those as we left the Chicomóztotl encampment and took a southeastward winding trail that brought us gradually down from the mountains to the lower lands. And I have to say that whenever I looked back at the long, coiling, weapon-bristled train that followed us, I could not help feeling pridefully rather like a conquistador myself.

To everyone's great relief and greater joy, the vanguard hunters and foragers did provide us all with a fairly substantial meal from our first night on the march, and increasingly tasty and nourishing victuals during the subsequent days. Also, to the great relief of my rump and Nochéztli's, we eventually acquired two saddles. One of our advance scouts came running, one day, to report that there was a Spanish army outpost just one-long-run farther along the trail. It was, like the one Tiptoe and I had once encountered, a shack containing two soldiers and a pen containing four horses, two of them saddled.

I halted the train and Nochéztli summoned to us six warriors armed with maquáhuime. To them I said:

"I will not waste powder and lead on such a trivial obstacle. If you six cannot sneak up to that post and dispatch those white men on the instant, you do not deserve to be carrying swords. Go and do exactly that. One caution, however: try not to tear or bloody the clothes they wear."

The men did the gesture of kissing the earth, and dashed off through the underbrush. In a very short time they came back, all of them beaming happily and two of them holding high, by the hair, the heads of the two Spanish soldiers, dripping blood from their bearded neck stumps.

"We did it ever so neatly, my lord," said one of them. "Only the ground got bloody."

So we proceeded on to the guard shack, where we scavenged, besides the four horses, two more arcabuces, pólvora and balls for them, two steel knives and two steel swords. I set some men to stripping the soldiers' bodies of their armor and other garb, which was indeed unblemished except for the ingrained dirt and crusted sweat to be expected of uncleanly Spaniards. I congratulated the six warriors who had slain the soldiers, and the scouts who had found them, and told those scouts to go on ahead of us as before. Then I called for our two white men, Uno and Dos, to report to me.

"I have gifts for you," I told them. "Not only better clothes than those rags you are wearing, but also steel helmets and armor and stout boots."

"By the blood, Cap'n John, but we are grateful to you," said Uno. "Traveling shanks's-nag is hard enough on our old sea legs, let alone doing it baldfooted."

I took that goose language to be a complaint about their having to walk, and said, "You will not need to walk any farther, if you can ride horseback."

"If we could ride a shipwreck over the Tortoise reefs," said Dos, "I would reckon we can ride anything."

"Might I ask, Cap'n," said Uno. "How come we gets kitted out so fancy, and not some of your chief mates?"

"Because, when we get to Tonalá, you two are going to be my mice."

"Mice, Cap'n?"

"I will explain when the time comes. Now, while the rest of us move on, you get into those uniforms, strap on the swords, get onto the two horses I am leaving for you and catch up to us as soon as you can."

"Aye aye, sir."

So Nochéztli and I had comfortable saddles again, and the two spare horses I put to use as pack animals, relieving several of my warriors of the heavy lead they were carrying.

The next event of any note occurred some days later, and this time I was not forewarned by my Aztéca scouts. Nochéztli and I rode over a low ridge and found ourselves looking down on some mud huts clustered on the bank of a large pond. Four of our scouts were there, drinking water given them by the villagers and sociably smoking poquíetin with them. I raised a hand to halt the column behind me and said to Nochéztli, "Collect all your knights and leading officers and join me yonder." He saw the look on my face and wordlessly went back to the train as I rode down to the little settlement.

I leaned from my horse and asked one of the scouts, "Who are these people?"

My look and my tone of voice made him stammer slightly. "Only—only simple fisher folk, Tenamáxtzin." And he beckoned to the oldest of the men present.

The old rustic sidled closer to me, fearful of my horse, and addressed me as respectfully as if I had been a mounted Spaniard. He spoke the tongue of the Kuanáhuata, which is a language sufficiently similar to Náhuatl that I was able to understand him.

"My lord, as I was telling your warrior here, we live by fishing this pond. Only we few families, as our ancestors have done since time before time."

"Why you? Why here?"

"There lives in this pond a small and delectable whitefish that can be found in no other waters. Until lately, they have been our commodity of trade with other Kuanáhuata settlements." He waved vaguely eastward. "But now there are white men—south, in Tonalá. They also esteem these unique fish, and we can trade for rich goods such as we have never before—"

He broke off, looking past me as Nochéztli and his officers came to stand, maquáhuime in hand, in a menacing ring about the cluster of huts. All the other folk huddled together, the men protectively putting their arms about the women and children. I spoke over my shoulder:

"Knight Nochéztli, give the order to kill the scouts."

"What? Tenamáxtzin, they are four of our best—" But he also broke off, when I turned my look on him, and obediently nodded to his nearest officers. Before the stunned and unbelieving scouts could move or make a sound of protest, they had been beheaded. The old man and his villagers stared in horror at the bodies lying twitching on the ground, and at the heads, apart, which were blinking their eyes as if still in disbelief of their fate.

I told the old man, "There will be no more white men for you to trade with. We are marching on Tonalá to make sure of that. Any of you who wish to come with us—and help us slaughter those white men—may do so, and welcome. Any who do not will be put to death right here where you stand."

"My lord," pleaded the old man. "We have no quarrel with the white men. They have traded fairly with us. Since they came, we have prospered more than—"

"I have heard that argument too often before," I interrupted him. "I will say this just once again. There will be no white men, fair traders or otherwise. You saw what I have done to men of my own who took my words too lightly. Those of you who are coming, come now."

The old man turned to his people and spread his arms helplessly. Several of the men and boys, and two or three of the sturdier women, one of them leading her boy-child, stepped forward and made the kissing-the-earth gesture to me.

The old man sadly shook his head and said, "Even were I not too aged to fight and even to march, my lord, I would not leave this place of my fathers and my fathers' fathers. Do what you will."

What I did was take off his head with my own steel sword. At that, all the remaining men and boys of the village hastened to step forward and make the tlalqualíztli gesture. So did most of the women and young girls. Only three or four other females, holding babies in their arms or with infants clutching to their skirts, remained where they were.

"Tenamáxtzin," said the cóyotl-faced officer Butterfly, with a solicitude I would not have expected of her, "those are innocent women and tiny children."

"You have killed others just like them," I said.

"But those were Spaniards!"

"These women can talk. These children can point. I want no witnesses left alive." I tossed her my spare sword, an obsidian-edged maquáhuitl that hung by a thong from my pommel, because she was carrying only an arcabuz. "Here. Pretend they are Spaniards."

And so she did, but clumsily, because she was obviously reluctant to do it. Hence her victims suffered more than the several men had done, cowering under her blows and having to be hacked at more often than should have been necessary. By the time Butterfly was done, their copiously spilled blood had trickled down the bank and was staining the water red at the pond's margin. The villagers who had surrendered themselves to me—all of them wailing and tearing their hair and mantles—were herded back among our slave contingent, and I ordered that they be closely watched, lest they try to flee.

We had gone a considerable distance from that place before Nochéztli worked up courage enough to speak to me again. He nervously cleared his throat and said:

"Those were people of our own race, Tenamáxtzin. The scouts were men of our own city."

"I would have slain those if they were my brothers born. I grant you that I have cost us four good warriors, but I promise you that, from this day on, not a single other of our army will ever be negligent of my commands, as were those four."

"That is certain," Nochéztli admitted. "But those Kuanáhuata you ordered slain—they had neither opposed nor angered you..."

"They were, at heart, as much in league with and dependent on the Spaniards as Yeyac was. So I gave them the same choice I gave Yeyac's warriors. Join us or die. They chose. See here, Nochéztli, you have not had the benefit of Christian teaching, as I did in my younger days. The priests were fond of telling us stories from the annals of their religion. They particularly rejoiced in recounting the exploits and sayings of their godling called Jesucristo. I well remember one of that godling's sayings. 'He that is not with me is against me.' "

"And you wished to leave no witnesses to our passage, I realize that, Tenamáxtzin. But you must know that eventually, inevitably, the Spanish are going to hear of our army and our intent."

"Ayyo, indeed they will. I want them to. I am planning to threaten and taunt them with it. But I want the white men to know only enough to keep them in uncertainty, in apprehension, in terror. I do not wish them to know our number, our strength of armament, our position at any given time, or our course of march. I want the white men starting in fright at every unexpected noise, recoiling from every unfamiliar sight, becoming distrustful of every stranger they see, getting neck cramps from forever looking over their shoulders. Let them think us evil spirits, and countless, impossible to find, and likely to strike here, there, anywhere. There must be no witnesses who can tell them anything different."

Some days later, one of our scouts came trotting from the southern horizon to tell me that the town of Tonalá was within easy reach, about four one-long-runs distant. His fellow scouts, he said, were at the moment making their cautious way around the town's outskirts, to determine the extent of it. All he could tell me, from his own brief observation, was that Tonalá seemed to be mostly of new-built structures, and there were no visible thunder-tubes guarding its perimeter.

I halted the column and gave orders for all contingents to spread out into separate camps, as they had done at Chicomóztotl, and to prepare to stay encamped for longer than just overnight. I also called for Uno and Dos and told them:

"Another gift for you, señores. Nochéztli and I are going to lend you our saddled horses for a time."

"Bless ye, Cap'n John," said Dos with a heartfelt sigh. "From Hell, Hull and Halifax, Good Lord deliver us."

Uno said, "Miles bragged that we could ride anything, but, begod, we did not reckon on riding the German Chair. Our blindcheeks are hurting like we been catted and keelhauled the whole way here."

I did not ask for explanation of this goose gabble, but only gave them their instructions.

"The town of Tonalá is yonder. This scout will lead you there. You will be my mice on horseback. Other scouts are circling the town, but I want you to probe the interior. Do not ride in until after dark, but then try to look like haughty Spanish soldiers and prowl around as much as possible. Bring me, as best you can, a description of the place—an estimate of its population, both white and otherwise—and, most important, a fair count of the soldiers stationed there."

"But what if we are challenged, John British?" asked Uno. "We can hardly speak any response, let alone a password. Do we give them a taste of our steel?" He touched the sheathed sword at his belt.

"No. If anyone addresses you, simply wink lewdly and put a finger to your lips. Since you will be moving quietly and in the dark, they will assume that you are skulking off to visit your maátime."

"Our what?"

"A soldiers' brothel. A house of cheap whores."

"Aye aye, sir!" Dos said enthusiastically. "And can we tickle the little coneys while we are there?"

"No. You are to do no fighting and no whoring. Only get inside the town, get around in it and get yourselves back here. You can wield your steel when we assail the place, and when we have taken it, you will have plenty of females to frolic with."

From the information brought back by the scouts—including Uno and Dos, who said that their presence and prowling had excited no comment whatever—I was able to picture Tonalá in my mind. It was about the same size as Compostela, and about equally populated. Unlike Compostela, though, it had not grown up around an already existing native settlement, but apparently had been founded by Spaniards newly come there. So, except for the usual outlying shacks to house their servants and slaves, they had built substantial residences of adobe and wood. There were also, as in Compostela, two sturdy stone structures: a small church—not yet expanded to be the bishop's cathedral—and a modest palace for the offices of government and barracks for the soldiers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Ingenious, my lord. Eminently workable. And enjoyable."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Get on, then! Say it!"

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

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

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

XXIX

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

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

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

If there are such beings as Saints Harry and George, they lent their followers greater strength of arm than Santiago did to his. Uno and Dos, though unsteadied by saddles and stirrups, slashed left and right from atop their mounts, as tirelessly, mercilessly and killingly as did I and Nochéztli. We four struck at the soldiers' throats and faces, the only vulnerable places between their steel helmets and steel breastplates, and so did our Aztéca warriors wielding obsidian maquáhuime.

The Yaki warriors, however, did not have to be so precise in their aim. In these close quarters, they had dropped their unwieldy long spears and were almost indiscriminately swinging their ironwood war clubs. A blow to an opponent's head would dent his helmet deeply enough that his skull would cave in beneath it. A blow to an opponent's body would so dent his breastplate that he would either die of crushed bones and organs or—more agonizingly—suffocate, his chest unable to expand to breathe.

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

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

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

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

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

"These things were my wife and my sons!"

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

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

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

I turned my horse toward the sound of that bell, knowing it must come from the town's center. Along the way there, I saw—besides my energetically working warriors and their victims—many houses and merchants' shops and artisans' workshops that had formerly been well-built and perhaps even handsome structures, but were now mere ruins, irreparably shattered or totally leveled, clearly the doing of our women's granadas. There were yet more corpses visible within the rubble of those places, but they were so dismembered and shredded that they could hardly provide even intact scalps for the Yaki. I was eyeing one particularly fine house just ahead of me—certainly the abode of some high Spanish dignitary—and wondering why it had not been demolished, when I heard an urgent cautionary cry in the Poré tongue: "Take care, my lord!" and I yanked my horse to a halt.

Next instant, that house before me bulged—like the cheeks of a musician playing one of those jug flutes called "the warbling waters"—but it made no such sweet sound. The noise it uttered was more like that of the drum called "the drum that tears out the heart." I gave a violent start and my horse shied in fright, and the two of us nearly parted company. The house was enveloped in a thundercloud of smoke, and though it was too solidly constructed to fly asunder, its doors and shutters and bits of furniture and unidentifiable other contents came darting in shards like lightning out of that thundercloud. As chance would have it, I and my horse were struck by only a single fragment apiece, and those did us no harm, being only gobbets of some person's flesh. When things stopped falling roundabout, the woman emerged from the nearby alley where she had taken cover. It was Butterfly, and she came carrying a floppy leather bag and smoking a poquíetl.

"You do excellent work," I said. "I thank you for the warning."

"Those were my last two granadas," she said, shaking the bag to show me. Only a handful of thin reed-rolled poquíetin fell out. She gave me one, I took a light from hers, and we smoked companionably as she fell in beside my horse and we went leisurely on together.

She said, "We did as you ordered, Tenamáxtzin. Employed our granadas only on buildings, and we tried to choose the most imposing ones to destroy. Only twice did we have to squander the weapons just to slay individuals. Two mounted soldiers. There was not much left of them."

"That is a pity," I said. "I want to collect all the horses we can."

"Then I am sorry, Tenamáxtzin. But it was unavoidable. They came upon us suddenly, just as two of my warriors were about to toss their lighted granadas through a house window, and the soldiers were waving swords and shouting—for us to surrender, I suppose. Of course we did no such thing."

"Of course," I said. "I was not chiding you, Butterfly."

The church bell continued its useless pealing until she and I reached the open square fronting that church and the adjoining palace—and just then the ringing ceased abruptly. My arcabuz men had followed the rest of us into the town, to pick off any runaways that might outdistance our foot warriors, and one of those men very neatly put a ball into the bell-ringer up in the little tower that sat atop the church. The Spaniard, a black-clad priest or friar, pitched out of the bell tower, bounced off the slanted roof and was dead when he thumped onto the cobblestones of the square.

"As well as I can tell," said Knight Nochéztli, bringing his blood-spattered horse alongside mine, "there very soon will be only three white men still alive in Tonalá. They are in the church yonder—three men, unarmed. I glanced inside and saw them, but left them for you, my lord, as you commanded."

His knights and officers began grouping about us, waiting for further orders, and the square was rapidly filling with other people, as well. Every warrior not otherwise and elsewhere occupied was herding the captive white women and girls into that open space, and hurrying to claim the favor that is the common soldier's traditional celebration of a victory. That is to say, the men were violently raping the females. Since there were considerably more men than women and girls, and since many of the men were disinclined to wait their turn, in some cases two or three warriors would be simultaneously using the various orifices of a single female.

Needless to say, those women and girls capable of screaming or pleading or protesting were doing so, and vociferously. But I am sure that these victims were making a noise even more horrified and horrible than has ever been heard at any other such scene of celebration. That was because the white females, all having abundant and long and lustrous hair, made the Yaki warriors more lustful of having their scalps than of possessing any other part of them. Each of those Yaki who had dragged hither a Spanish female threw her down and tore off the top of her head before he threw himself on top of her bare body. Several other Yaki, who had brought no captives of their own, were scurrying about the square and sawing the scalps off supine women and girls while they were being violated by another man—or two or three.

I myself found those females, however comely and shapely and desirable in other respects, almost impossible even to look at, with their heads peeled nakedly round and red and pulpy. I could not have brought myself to couple with one—not even with my eyes shut, because there would have been no way to shut out the equally repellent stench of them. The smell of their torn heads' blood was rank enough, but many of the creatures also were voiding their bladders and bowels from sheer terror, and others were vomiting because of what had been put down their throats.

"I thank the war god Cuticáuri," said Butterfly, at my stirrup, "that we Purémpecha do not let our hair grow."

"I wish you did," growled Nochéztli, "so I could snatch all you stupid bitches bald of head!"

"What is this?" I asked, surprised, because he was ordinarily so amiable of nature. "Why do you revile our meritorious warrior women?"

"That one has not told you, Tenamáxtzin? Of the two they so incompetently killed?"

Butterfly and I regarded him with puzzlement, and I said, "Two white soldiers, yes, who surprised them while they were very capably doing their duty."

"Our two white soldiers, Tenamáxtzin. The men you called Señor Uno and Señor Dos."

"Yya ayya," I murmured, really sadly.

"They were our allies?" asked Butterfly. "How should we have known? They were mounted. They were armored and bearded. They waved swords. They shouted."

"They would have been shouting encouragement, you blundering woman!" said Nochéztli. "Could you not see that their horses were without saddles?"

Butterfly looked chagrined, but shrugged. "Ours was a dawn attack. Not many people were dressed."

To me, Nochéztli said ruefully, "They had been riding before me, so I came upon their remains right after they were blown to pieces. I could not even tell which man was which. Indeed, it would have been hard to tell their fragments from those of their horses."

"Be easy, Nochéztli," I said with a sigh. "We shall miss them, but there are bound to be such casualties in any war. Let us just hope that Uno and Dos are now in their Christian heaven, if that is where they would wish to be, with their Harry and George. Now, back to the business of our war. Give orders that the men, as soon as each has had his satisfaction with the captured women, are to fan out through the town and loot it. Salvage everything that might be of use to us—weapons, pólvora, lead, armor, horses, clothes, blankets, any portable provisions. When every ruin and every surviving building has been emptied, it is to be set afire. Nothing is to be left of Tonalá except the church and palace here."

Nochéztli dismounted and went among his under-officers, passing along those orders, then returned to me and asked:

"Why, my lord, are you sparing these two buildings?"

"For one thing, they will not easily burn," I said, dismounting also. "And we could not possibly make enough granadas to tear them down. But chiefly I am leaving those for a certain Spanish friend—a truly good Christian white man. If he outlives this war, he will have something around which to build anew. He has already told me that this place will have a new name. Now, come, let us have a look inside the palace."

The lower floor of that stone building had been the soldiers' barracks, and it was expectably in disorder, since its inhabitants had so wildly scrambled out a little while before. We climbed the stairs and found ourselves in a warren of small rooms, all furnished with chairs and tables, some rooms full of books, others full of shelved maps or stacked documents. In one was a table on which lay a thick sheaf of fine Spanish paper, an inkhorn, a penknife and a jar full of goose quills. Beside them lay an ink-stained quill and a paper only half written over, by whatever scribe had been at work there the day before. I stood looking at those things for a moment, then said to Nochéztli:

"I was told that there is, among our slave contingent, a certain girl who can read and write the Spanish language. A Moro or a mongrel, I forget. Ride back to our encampment, right now, at a gallop, find that girl and bring her here, as quickly as you can. Also send in some of our men to scavenge whatever is useful from the soldiers' quarters downstairs. I will wait here for you and the girl, after I have visited the church next door."

The Tonalá church was as modest in size and appointments as was the church Bishop Quiroga currently occupied in Compostela. One of the three men in there was a priest, decently dressed in the usual black, the other two were pudgy, merchant-looking men, ridiculously clad in nightwear and whatever other clothes they had had time to fling over them. They both quailed back from me, against the altar rail, but the priest boldly came forward, thrusting a carved wooden cross at me and babbling in that Church language that I had heard at the few Masses I had once attended.

"Not even other Spaniards can understand that nonsensical guirígay, padre," I said sharply. "Speak to me in some sensible tongue."

"Very well, you heathen renegade!" he snapped. "I was adjuring you, in the name and language of the Lord, to depart from these sacred precincts."

"Renegade?" I repeated. "You seem to assume that I am some white man's runaway slave. I am not. And these precincts are mine, built on the land of my people. I am here to reclaim them."

"This is the property of Holy Mother Church! Who do you think you are?"

"I know who I am. But your Holy Mother Church gave me the name of Juan Británico."

"Dear God!" he exclaimed, appalled. "Then you are apostate! A heretic! Worse than a heathen!"

"Far worse," I said pleasantly. "Who are those two men?"

"The alcalde of Tonalá, Don José Osado Algarve de Sierra. And the corregidor, Don Manuel Adolfo del Monte."

"The town's two foremost citizens, then. What are they doing here?"

"God's house is sanctuary. Holy refuge. Inviolable. It would be sacrilege were they to be harmed here."

"So they cringe cowardly behind your skirts, padre, and abandon their people to the storm and the strangers? Including their own loved ones, perhaps? Anyway, I do not share your superstitions."

I stepped around him and, with my sword, stabbed each of the men to the heart.

The priest cried, "Those señores were high and valued functionaries of His Majesty King Carlos!"

"I do not believe that. Anyone of any majesty could hardly have been proud of them."

"I adjure you again, you monster! Begone from this church of God! Remove all your savages from this parish of God!"

"I will," I said equably, turning to look out the door. "As soon as they tire of it."

The priest joined me at the door and said, beseechingly now, "In God's name, man, some of those poor females yonder are children. Many were virgins. Some of them are virgin nuns. The brides of Christ."

"They will shortly be with their husband, then. I hope he proves tolerant of his wives' impairments. Come with me, padre. I wish you to see something, probably less distressing than this sight."

I ushered him out of the church, and there I found, among others of my men not busy at the moment, the trustworthy Iyac Pozonáli, to whom I said, "I am putting this white priest in your charge, Iyac. I do not think you need expect him to make mischief. Only stay by him to keep him from harm by any of our people."

Then I led them both into the palace and upstairs to that writing room, and pointed to the partly done document, and told the priest, "Read that to me, if you can."

"Of course I can. It is merely a respectful salutation. It says, To the very illustrious Señor Don Antonio de Mendoza, viceroy and governor for His Majesty in this New Spain, president of the Audiencia and the Royal Chancellery...' That is all. Evidently the alcalde was about to dictate to the scribe some report or request to be sent to the viceroy."

"Thank you. That will do."

"Now you kill me, too?"

"No. And for that, be thankful to another padre whom I once knew. I have already instructed this warrior to be your companion and protector."

"Then may I take my leave? There are last rites to be bestowed on my many, many unfortunate parishioners, and short shrift it is that I can give them."

"Vaya con Dios, padre," I said, meaning no irony, and gestured for Pozonáli to go with him. Then I simply stood and looked out the window of that room, at what was still going on in the square below, and at the fires beginning to spring up at more distant places in the town, and I waited for Nochéztli to return with the reading-and-writing girl slave.

She was a mere child, and certainly not a Moro, for her complexion was only a slightly darker copper color than my own, and she was too pretty to have had much black blood in her. But she obviously was some kind of mongrel female, for those have bodies maturely developed at a very young age, and so did she. I supposed she must be one of the more complex breeds that Alonso de Molina had once told me about—pardo, cuarterón, whatever—and that fact might account for her having been given some education. My first test of that was to speak to her in Spanish:

"I am told that you can read the writing of the Spaniards."

She understood, and said respectfully, "Yes, my lord."

"Read this to me, then." I pointed to the document on the table.

Without having to study it or laboriously puzzle it out, she immediately and fluently read, "Al muy ilustrísimo Señor Don Antonio de Mendoza, visorrey é gobernador por Su Majestad en esta Nueva España, presidente de la Audiencia y la Chancellería Real... It stops there, my lord. If I might say so, the scribe is not highly accomplished in his spelling."

"I am told that you also can write in that language."

"Yes, my lord."

"I wish you to write something for me. Use a different piece of paper."

"Certainly, my lord. Only give me a moment to prepare. The materials are dry."

"While we wait, Nochéztli," I said to him, "go and find that church's priest. He is somewhere in the crowd outside, in company with our Iyac Pozonáli. Fetch the priest here to me."

In the meantime, the girl had laid the scribe's stained quill to one side, plucked a fresh one from the jar, expertly used the penknife to whittle a point to it, spat delicately into the inkhorn, stirred it with the new quill and finally said, "I am ready, my lord. What shall I write?"

I looked out the window, briefly meditating. The day was darkening now, the fires were more numerous and blazing higher; the whole of Tonalá would soon be aflame. I turned back to the girl and spoke just a few words, slowly enough that she had finished her scribbling almost as soon as I stopped speaking. I went and reached over her shoulder, laying the scribe's paper and hers side by side. Of course, I could make nothing of either of them, but I could tell that the girl's writing was, to the eye, more bold and forthright than the spidery lines of the scribe.

She asked timidly, "Shall I read it back to you, my lord?"

"No. Here is the priest. Let him do it." I pointed. "Padre, can you read that writing, too?"

"Of course I can," he said again, this time impatiently. "But it makes little sense. All it says is, 'I can still see him burning.' "

"Thank you, padre. That is what I meant it to say. Very good, girl. Now take that unfinished document and append these words to it. I have only just begun. Then write my name, Juan Británico. Then add my real name. Can you also make the word-pictures of Náhuatl?"

"I am sorry, no, my lord."

"Then put it in that Spanish writing, as best you can. Téotl-Tenamáxtzin."

That she did, though not so swiftly, being very careful to make it as correct and comprehensible as she could. When she was done, she blew on the paper to dry it before she gave it to me. I handed it to the priest and asked, "Can you still read it?"

The paper shook in his fingers and his voice was quavery. "To the very illustrious... et cetera, et cetera. I have only just begun. Signed Juan Británico. Then that fearsome other name. I can make it out, yes, but I cannot well pronounce it."

He started to give it back to me, but I said, "Keep the paper, padre. It was intended for the viceroy. It still is. If and when you can find a living white men, who can serve as your messenger, have him deliver that to the very illustrious Mendoza in the City of Mexíco. Until then, simply show it to every other Spaniard who comes this way."

He went out, the paper still shaking in his hand, and Pozonáli went with him. To Nochéztli I said:

"Help the girl gather and bundle together all this paper and the writing materials, for safekeeping. I shall have other use for them. And for you, child. You are bright and obedient and you did exceedingly well here today. What is your name?"

"Verónica," you said.

XXX

We left Tonalá a smoldering, smoking desert of a town, unpeopled except for the priest and what few slaves had elected to stay, only the two stone buildings still upright and entire. We left it, too, with our warriors looking rather flamboyant, not to say ridiculous. The Yaki were so heavily festooned with skirts of scalps that every man seemed to be walking waist-deep through a hillock of bloody human hair. The Purémpe women had appropriated the finest gowns of the late Spanish ladies—silks and velvets and brocades—so (although some had ignorantly donned the dresses backward) they made a gaudily colorful throng. Many of the arcabuz men and Aztéca warriors now wore steel breastplates over their quilted cotton armor. They disdained to avail themselves of the enemies' high boots or steel helmets, but they had pillaged from the Spanish women's wardrobes also, and now wore on their heads fancy feathered bonnets and ornate lace mantillas. All our men and women were carrying bales and bundles of plunder besides—every sort of thing from hams and cheeses and bags of coins to those weapons that Uno had called halberds, which combine spear, hook and ax. Our Swaddlers and Swallowers followed, supporting our less severely wounded men, and twelve or fourteen led the captured horses, bridled and saddled, on which rode or were draped the wounded who could not walk.

When we got back to our camping place, those wounded warriors were turned over to our various tíciltin, for most of the tribes composing the army had brought along at least one native physician. Even the Yaki had done so, but since their tícitl could have administered little more than masked chantings and prancings and rattlings, I ordered that the Yaki casualties be also attended by the more enlightened physicians of other tribes. As they had done before and would always do, the Yaki grumbled angrily at my disrespect for their sacred traditions, but I firmly insisted and they had to comply.

That was not the only dissension I would discover when my forces were regathered. The men and women who had participated in the taking of Tonalá wanted to keep for themselves all the booty they had collected there, and were much disgruntled when I ordered that the goods be distributed, as equitably as was possible, among the entire army and the slaves as well. But that enforced apportionment did not satisfy the many bands who had not participated. Though they had known, from the start, my reasons for using in this battle only a fraction of my available forces, the very success of our mission seemed now to have made them begrudge us that success. They muttered sullenly that I had been unjust to leave them behind, that I had shown undue preferment to my "favorites." I swear, they even evinced envy of the wounds the "favored" warriors had brought back, and there was no way I could order those shared around. I did my best to appease the malcontents by promising that there would be many more such battles and victories, that every contingent would eventually get its chance at acquiring glory, loot and wounds—and even god-pleasing deaths. But just as I had long ago learned that being a Uey-Tecútli was no easy occupation, so I was now learning that being the leader of a vast and conglomerate army was no easier.

I decreed that we all would stay in our present encampment while I pondered on where to take that army and use it next. I had several reasons for wanting to remain for some time where we were. One was to let the Purémpe women make another considerable store of the clay-ball granadas, because they had proved so effective in Tonalá. And since we now had an appreciable number of horses, I wanted more of my men to learn to ride them. Also, because we had lost many of our best arcabuz men—partly through my own fault—I wanted others to have ample opportunity to practice with our now-numerous armory of those weapons, and to learn to employ them in the manner the late Uno had recommended.

So I delegated to Knight Nochéztli most of the workaday responsibilities of command, thereby relieving myself of having to deal with petty complaints, petitions, quarrels and other such exasperations, conserving my own time and attention for those things that only I could command and oversee in person. Foremost of those was a project I wished to commence while we were still comfortably encamped. That is why one day I summoned you, Verónica.

When you stood before me, looking alert and attentive but demure, your hands behind your back, I said what I had said to so many others before, "It is my intention to retake this One World from its unwelcome Spanish conquerors and occupiers and oppressors."

You nodded and I went on, "Whether we succeed or fail in this endeavor, it may be that, at some time in the future, the historians of The One World will be glad to have available a true record of the events of Tenamáxtzin's war. You can write and you have the materials for doing so. I should like you to start setting down in writing what may be the only record of this rebellion that will ever exist. Do you think you can do that?"

"I will do my best, my lord."

"Now, you witnessed only the conclusion of the battle at Tonalá. I will recount for you the circumstances and incidents leading up to it. This you and I can do at leisure, while we are camped here, allowing me to sort out in my own mind the sequence of events, and allowing you to get accustomed to writing at my dictation, and allowing both of us to review and amend any mistakes that may be made."

"I am fortunate in having a retentive memory, my lord. I think we will not make many mistakes."

"Let us hope not. However, we will not always have the luxury of our sitting together while I talk and you listen. This army has uncountable one-long-runs to march, uncountable enemies to confront, uncountable battles to be fought. I should wish to have them all on record—the marches, the enemies, the battles, the outcomes. Since I must lead the marching, find the enemies, be in the forefront of the battles, I clearly cannot always be describing for you what is occurring. Much of it you will have to see for yourself."

"I also possess good eyesight, my lord."

"I will choose a horse for you, and teach you to ride it, and keep you ever by my side—except in the thick of battle, when you will be posted at a safe distance. Thus you will see many things only from afar. You must try to understand what you are seeing, and then try to make coherent record of it. You will seldom have long, quiet intervals in which to sit down with quill and paper. You may seldom even have a place to sit down. So you must contrive some way to make quick notes—on the spot or on the run—that later you can elaborate when, as now, we are encamped for a time."

"I can do that, my lord. In fact—"

"Let me finish, girl. I was about to suggest that you use a method long favored by the traveling pochtéca merchants for keeping their accounts. You pluck the leaves of the wild grapevine and—"

"And scratch on them with a sharp twig. The white marks are as enduring as ink on paper. Your pardon, my lord. I already knew that. In fact, I have been doing that—here and now—as you have been speaking."

You brought your hands out from behind your back, holding grape leaves and a twig. The leaves bore minute scratches that you had made without even looking at what you were doing.

More than a little astonished, I said, "You can make sense of those marks? You can repeat some of the words I have spoken?"

"The marks, my lord, are only to nudge my memory. No one else could interpret them. And I do not pretend to have preserved your every word, but—"

"Prove it, girl. Read back to me something from this conversation." I reached out and indicated one of the leaves at random. "What was said there?"

It took you only a moment of study. " 'At some time in the future, the historians of The One World will be glad to have available—' "

"By Huitztli!" I exclaimed. "This is something most marvelous. You are something most marvelous. I have known only one other scribe in my lifetime, a Spanish churchman. He was not nearly so adept as you are, and he was a man approaching middle age. How old are you, Verónica?"

"I think I have ten or eleven years, my lord. I am not sure."

"Indeed? From the near maturity of your form, and even more from the refinement evidenced in your speech, I should have taken you to be three or four years older. How did you get so well educated at such a young age?"

"My mother was Church-schooled and convent-bred. She taught me from my earliest years. Just before she died, she placed me in the same nunnery."

"That explains your name, then. But if your mother was a slave, she could have been no ordinary Moro drudge."

"She was a mulata, my lord," you said, without embarrassment. "She disliked to talk much about her parentage—or my own. But children, of course, can divine much that is left unsaid. I surmised that her mother must have been a black, but her father a Spaniard of some fairly high position and prosperity, that he would pay to send a bastard daughter to school. Of my own father, she was so secretive that I have never been able even to conjecture."

"I have seen only your face," I said. "Let me see the rest of you. Undress for me, Verónica."

That took but a moment, because you wore only a single, flimsy, ankle-length, almost threadbare gown of Spanish style.

I said, "I once had all the gradations and degrees of mixed parentage described to me. But I have no experience of judging them on sight, except that I also once knew a girl who was, I believe, the product of a white mother and black father. As for you, Verónica, I would say that your grandmother's Moro blood shows only in your already budded breasts and dark nipples and already beginning tuft of ymáxtli down below. Your grandfather's Spanish blood, I would suppose, accounts for your delicate and very handsome facial features. But you do not have hairy armpits or legs, so your grandfather's Spanish white blood must have been later diluted. Also you are as clean and sweet-smelling as any female of my own race. It is easily apparent that your unknown father contributed some further and improving admixture to your nature."

"If it matters to you, my lord," you said boldly, "whatever else I am, I am also still a virgin. I have not yet been raped by any man and not yet been tempted to dally with any."

I paused to contemplate that forthright remark—you had said "tempted," you had said "not yet"—while I savored what I was looking at. And here I will honestly confide something. Even back then, at that tender age, Verónica, you were so womanly endowed, so physically beautiful and appealing—besides being intelligent and cultivated beyond your years—that you were a very real temptation to me. I might have asked you to become something more than just my companion and my scribe. But that notion flickered only briefly in my mind, because I was still mindful of the pledge I had made to the memory of Ixínatsi. In truth, though I would have rejoiced in a mutual intimacy, I dared not either tempt or cajole you to it, for I would have risked falling in love with you. And genuinely to love a woman was what I had sworn never to do again.

And, again in truth, it is as well that I did not, in view of what would later transpire between us.

And, still in truth, I did, nevertheless—inevitably, inescapably—come to love you dearly.

At that time, though, all I said was, "Get dressed again and come with me. We shall relieve the Purémpe women of some of the garments they pilfered from the Tonalá wardrobes. You deserve the finest of feminine garb, little Verónica. And you will need more of it, too—certainly underneath—if you are to ride a horse beside mine."

Not all of our subsequent conquests were accomplished as easily as that of Tonalá. While we remained encamped, I kept my scouts and swift-runners circulating in all directions roundabout, and from their reports, I decided to make our next assault on the Spaniards a double assault—simultaneous but at two separate, far-apart places. It would certainly serve to make the Spaniards ever more fearful that we were many in number, powerful in force of arms, fierce in our determination, capable of striking anywhere—not just the angry uprising of a few malcontent tribesmen but a genuine, landwide insurrection against all the usurper white men.

Some of the scouts informed me that some distance to the southeast of our camp lay a vast expanse of rich estancia farms and ranches, the proprietors of which had all clustered their residences close together—for convenience and neighborliness and mutual protection—at the center of that expanse of land. Other scouts reported that to the southwest of us was situated a Spanish crossroads trading post, doing a thriving business with traveling merchants and local landowners—but heavily fortified and guarded by a considerable force of Spanish foot soldiers.

Those were the two places I determined to hit next, and at the same time, Knight Nochéztli to lead the attack on the estancia community, I the attack on the trading post. And now I would give some of our previously unblooded (and envious) warriors their chance at fighting, at plunder, at glory, at god-pleasing death. So to Nochéztli I assigned our Cora and Huichol men and all our horsemen—among them Verónica, to be the chronicler of that battle. With me I took Rarámuri and Otomí warriors and all our accomplished arcabuz men. We left behind all those others who had participated in the taking of Tonalá—causing the Yaki, in their customary way, to mutter mutinously. Nochéztli and I carefully calculated our traveling times, to set the day on which we would make our separate, simultaneous sieges, and the later day of our rejoining, victorious, at our present camp—and then we marched away in our divergent directions.

As I have said, not all of my war went smoothly. My attack on the trading post seemed, at first, unlikely to result in any outcome that could be called victorious.

The place consisted mostly of the huts and shacks of the Spaniards' laborers and slaves. But those surrounded the post itself, which sat secure inside a palisade of heavy, close-abutted logs, all pointed at the top, with an equally massive gate, tight shut and barred within. From narrow slits in the log wall protruded the snouts of thunder-tubes. When our forces went, roaring and bellowing, at a run across the open ground at one side of the post, I expected we would only have to dodge the heavy iron balls that I had previously seen thrown by Spanish thunder-tubes. But these had been charged with bits of scrap metal, flints, nails, broken glass and the like. When they boomed out at us, there was no dodging the lethal spray they threw, and a great many of our warriors in the forefront of the attack fell horribly mutilated, dismembered, shredded to death.

Happily for us, though, a thunder-tube takes even longer to recharge than does a thunder-stick. Before the Spanish soldiers could manage that, we surviving warriors had made our way close against the stockade wall where the thunder-tubes could not be turned to aim at us. My Rarámuri men, true to their name of "Fast of Feet," easily swarmed up the rough-barked logs, and over them into the stockade. While some of those began at once to engage the Spanish defenders, others rushed to unbar the gate to let the rest of us enter.

Still, the soldiers were no cowards, nor unnerved to the point of immediate surrender. Some, in ranks at a distance, belabored us with arcabuces. But my own arcabuz men, now well versed in the proper employment of that weapon, performed with equal accuracy and killing efficiency. Meanwhile, we others, with spears and swords and maquáhuime, fought the many other soldiers at close quarters and eventually hand to hand. This was no brief battle; the brave soldiers were prepared to fight to the death. And, finally, to that death they all went.

So had a lamentable number of my own men, both outside and inside the palisade. Since, on this march, we had brought no Swaddlers to attend our wounded, and since the post contained no horses on which to transport them, I could only instruct our Swallowers to bestow a quick and merciful death on the fallen who were still alive but too badly injured to make our return march.

It had been a costly conquest, but still a profitable one. The trading post was a treasure house of useful and valuable goods—pólvora and lead balls, arcabuces and swords and knives, blankets and robes, smoked or salted stores of many good foods, even jugs of octli and chápari and Spanish wines. So, with my permission, we survivors celebrated our victory to the extent that we were all quite drunk and unsteady on our feet when we staggered away from there next morning. As I had done before, I invited the local slave families to come with us, and most of them did, carrying our bales and bags and jugs of plunder.

Arriving back at our encampment beyond the ruins of Tonalá, I was glad to learn from Nochéztli that his had been a much less difficult expedition than mine. The estancia community had been guarded not by trained soldiers, but only by the proprietors' own slave watchmen, naturally not armed with arcabuces, and not at all eager to repel an invasion. So Nochéztli had lost not a single man, and his forces had killed and raped and looted almost at leisure. They too had returned with great stores of foodstuffs and bags of maize and warm fabrics and usable Spanish clothing. Best of all, they had brought from those ranches many more horses and a herd of cattle nearly as numerous as those Coronado had taken north with him. We would no longer have to do much foraging or even hunting. We had food enough to sustain our whole army for a long time to come.

"And here, my lord," said Nochéztli. "A personal gift from me to you. I took these from the bed of one of those Spanish nobles." He handed me a neatly folded pair of beautifully lustrous silk sheets, only very slightly bloodstained. "I believe the Uey-Tecútli of the Aztéca should not have to sleep on the bare ground or a straw pallet like any common warrior."

"I thank you, my friend," I said sincerely, then laughed. "Though I fear you may incline me to the same self-indulgence and indolence as that of any Spanish nobleman."

There was other good news awaiting me there at the camp. Some of my swift-runners had gone scouting far abroad indeed, and now had returned to tell me that my war was being fought by others besides my own army.

"Tenamáxtzin, the word of your insurrection has spread from nation to nation and tribe to tribe, and many are eager to emulate your actions on behalf of The One World. From here, all the way to the coast of the Eastern Sea, bands of warriors are making forays—quick strike, quick withdrawal—against Spanish settlements and farms and homesteads. The Chichiméca Dog People, the Téochichiméca Wild Dog People, even the Zácachichiméca Rabid Dog People, are all doing those raid-and-run assaults on the white men. Even the Huaxtéca of the coastal lands, so long notorious for their lassitude, made an attack on the seaport city the Spanish call Vera Cruz. Of course, with their primitive weapons, the Huaxtéca could not do much damage there, but they assuredly caused alarm and fear among the residents."

I was immensely pleased to hear these things. The peoples mentioned by the scouts certainly were poorly armed, and just as certainly poorly organized in their uprisings. But they were helping me to keep the white man uneasy, apprehensive, perhaps awake at night. All of New Spain by now would be aware of those sporadic raids and my more devastating ones. New Spain, I hoped and believed, must be getting increasingly nervous and anxious about the continued existence of New Spain.

Well, the Huaxtéca and others could contrive to make their sudden attack-then-flee forays almost with impunity. But I was now commanding what was practically a traveling city—warriors, slaves, women, whole families, many horses and a herd of cattle—unwieldy, to say the least, to move from battlefield to battlefield. I decided that we needed a permanent place to settle, a place stoutly defensible, whence I could lead or send either small forces or formidable forces in any direction and have a safe haven for them to return to. So I summoned various of my knights who, I knew, had done considerable traveling in these parts of The One World, and asked their advice. A knight named Pixqui said:

"I know the very place, my lord. Our ultimate objective is an assault upon the City of Mexíco, southeast of here, and the place I am thinking of lies just about midway between here and there. The mountains called Miztóapan, 'Where the Cuguars Lurk.' The few white men who have ever seen them call them in their tongue the Mixton Mountains. They are rugged and craggy mountains interlaced with narrow ravines. We can find a valley in there commodious enough to accommodate our whole vast army. Even when the Spaniards learn we are there—as doubtless they will—they would have a hard time getting at us, unless they learn to fly. Lookouts atop the crags around our valley could espy any approaching enemy force. And since any such force would have to thread its way through those narrow ravines almost in single file, just a handful of our arcabuz men could stop them there, while our other warriors would rain arrows and spears and boulders down onto them from above."

"Excellent," I said. "It sounds impregnable. I thank you, Knight Pixqui. Go, then, throughout the camp and spread the order for everyone to prepare to march. We will leave at dawn for the Miztóapan Mountains. And one of you find that slave girl Verónica, my scribe, and have her attend me."

It was the Iyac Pozonáli who fetched you to me that fateful day. I had long been aware that he was often in your company, and regarding you with yearning looks. I am not oblivious to such things, and I have frequently been in love myself. I knew the iyac to be an admirable young man and—even before the revelation that transpired between us that day, Verónica—I could hardly have been jealous if it turned out that Pozonáli found favor in your eyes, as well.

Anyway, you had already written your account of Nochéztli's assault on the estancias—since you had been present there—so now I dictated the account of my own much more difficult assault on the trading post, you writing down all the words foregoing here, concluding with the decision to move to the Miztóapan. When I had done, you murmured:

"I am happy, my lord, to hear that you intend soon to attack the City of Mexíco. I hope you obliterate it as you did Tonalá."

"So do I. But why do you?"

"Because that will also obliterate the nunnery where I lived after my mother died."

"That convent was in the City of Mexíco? You never mentioned its location before. I know of only one nunnery there. It was very near the Mesón de San José, where I myself once lived."

"That is the one, my lord."

A somewhat disturbing but not dismaying suspicion was already dawning on me.

"And you hold some grudge against those nuns, child? I have often meant to ask. Why did you flee that convent and become a homeless wanderer, finally to find refuge among our slave contingent?"

"Because the nuns were so cruel, first to my mother, then to me."

"Explain."

"After her Church schooling, when my mother had had sufficient instruction in that religion, and had attained the age required, she was confirmed as a Christian and immediately took what they call holy orders—became a bride of Christ, as they say—and took residence in the convent as a novice nun. However, not many months later, it was discovered that she was pregnant. She was stripped of her habit and viciously whipped and evicted in disgrace. As I have said, she never told even me who it was that made her pregnant." You added bitterly, "I doubt that it was her husband Christ."

I pondered awhile, then asked, "Might your mother's name have been Rebeca?"

"Yes," you said, astonished. "How could you possibly know that, my lord?"

"I briefly attended that same Church school, so I know—some little—of her story. But I left the city about that time, so I never knew the whole story. After Rebeca's eviction, what became of her?"

"Bearing a fatherless bastard inside her, I daresay she was ashamed to go home to her own mother and father—her white patrón. For a time, she earned a precarious living, doing menial odd jobs about the markets, literally living on the streets. I was birthed on a bed of rags in some alley somewhere. I suppose I am fortunate to have survived the experience."

"And then?"

"Now she had two mouths to feed. I blush to say it, my lord, but she went—what you call in your language 'astraddle the road.' And, she being a mulata—well, you can imagine—she could hardly solicit rich Spanish nobles or even prosperous pochtéca merchants. Only market porters and Moro slaves and the like—entertaining them in squalid little inns and even in back streets outdoors. Toward the end—I could not have been more than four years old—I remember having to watch her do these things."

"Toward the end. What was the end?"

"Again I blush, my lord. From some one of her straddlings, she contracted the nanáua, the disease of uttermost shame and revulsion. When she knew she was dying, she went again to the convent, leading me by the hand. Under the rules of that Christian order, the nuns could not refuse to take me in. But of course they knew my history, so I was despised by all, and I had no hope of being accorded a novitiate. They simply used me as a servant, a slave, a drudge. Of all the work that needed doing, I did the lowliest, but at least they gave me bed and board."

"And education?"

"As I have told you, my mother had imparted to me much of the knowledge that she herself had earlier acquired. And I have some facility at being observant and attentive. So, even while I labored, I watched and listened and absorbed what the nuns were teaching their novices and other respectable young girls in residence there. When finally I decided I had learned all that they could, however viciously, teach me there... and when the drudgery and beatings had become intolerable... that was when I ran away."

"You are one supremely remarkable girl, Verónica. I am immeasurably glad that you survived your wanderings and came at last to—to us."

I pondered some more. How best to say this?

"From what little acquaintance I had with my schoolmate Rebeca, I believe it was her mother who gave you your white blood, and her father would have been a Moro, not some Spanish patrón. But that does not matter. What matters is that your father—whoever he was—I believe to have been an indio, a Mexícatl or Aztécatl. Thus you have three bloods in your veins, Verónica. That combination, I suppose, accounts for your uncommon comeliness. Now, mind you, I can only surmise the rest from the few hints dropped by Rebeca. But, if I am right, your paternal grandfather was a high noble of the Mexíca, a man brave and wise and truly noble in all respects. A man who defied the Spanish conquerors to the very end of his life. His contribution to your nature would account for your uncommon intelligence, and especially your astounding facility with words and writing. If I am right, that grandfather of yours was a Mexícatl named Mixtli—more properly Mixtzin—Lord Mixtli."

XXXI

Our army's progress across the countryside was even slower now than before, because of our having to herd along the stupid, stubborn, shambling, recalcitrant cattle. Because my warriors were becoming understandably restive—I having turned them from warriors into mere escorts and herdsmen—I halted the army once along the way to give them an opportunity for bloodshed, raping and looting.

That was at what had formerly been the Otomí people's chief village, named N't Tahí, but was now a town of estimable size, populated almost entirely by Spaniards and their usual retinues of servants and slaves, and renamed by them Zelalla. We left it as scorched and ruined and leveled as Tonalá, most of the leveling having been done by the Purémpe women's granadas. And we left it unpopulated, except by corpses—hairless corpses, courtesy of the Yaki.

I am gratified to report that my warriors departed from Zelalla with much more dignity and much less flamboyance than when they had departed from Tonalá—that is, not bedecked and bedizened in Spanish skirts and bonnets and mantillas and such. Indeed, for some while now, they had been getting ashamed—even the women and the most ignorant Moros—of all those gauds and baubles and steel breastplates. Besides their increasing embarrassment at wearing such unwarriorlike garb, they found the clothes dangerously constrictive in battle, and uncomfortably heavy even to march in, especially when sodden by rain. So all had been shedding those white men's garments and ornaments, piece by piece, along the way—everything except the warm woolens usable as blankets and mantles—and we again looked like the true indio army that we were.

In time, an excruciatingly long time, we did reach those Mountains Where the Cuguars Lurk, and they were exactly as Knight Pixqui had described them. With him in the lead, we wove our tortuous way through a maze of those narrow ravines, some only wide enough for a single horseman (or cow) to pass through, one after another. And eventually we did emerge into a not broad but lengthy valley, well watered, spacious enough for us all to camp comfortably, and even sufficiently green to provide grazing for our animals.

When we had settled down and gratefully rested for two or three days, I summoned to me the Iyac Pozonáli and my darling scribe Verónica, and told them:

"I have a mission for you two. I think it will not be a hazardous mission, though it will entail arduous travel. However"—I smiled—"I think also that you will not mind a long journey in close company with one another." You blushed, Verónica, and so did Pozonáli.

I went on, "It is certain that everyone in the City of Mexíco, from the Viceroy Mendoza down to the least market slave, knows of our insurrection and our depredations. But I should like to know how much they know of us, and what measures they may be taking to defend the city against us or to sally out and find and fight us in the open. What I want you to do is this. Go on horseback as fast and as far southeastward as you can, stopping only when you decide you are getting perilously close to any possible Spanish outposts. By my reckoning, that will probably be somewhere in the eastern part of Michihuácan, where it borders on the Mexíca lands. Leave the horses with any hospitable native who can tend them. From there, go on foot and dressed in the roughest of peasant garb. Take with you bags of some kind of marketable goods—fruits, vegetables, whatever you can procure. You may find the city solidly ringed about with sharp steel, but it must let supplies and commodities in and out. And I think the guards will hardly be suspicious of a young peasant farmer and—shall we say?—his little cousin, headed for the market."

You both blushed again. I continued:

"Just do not, Verónica, speak your Spanish. Do not speak at all. You, Pozonáli, I trust can talk your way past any guard or other challenger by mumbling Náhuatl and the few Spanish words you know, and gesticulating like some clumsy rustic."

"We will get into the city, Tenamáxtzin, I kiss the earth to that," he said. "Have you specific orders for us, once we are there?"

"I want both of you mainly to look and to listen. You, Iyac, have proven yourself a competent military man. You should have no trouble in recognizing whatever defenses the city is preparing for itself, or whatever preparations it is making in the way of an offensive against us. Meanwhile, go about the streets and the markets and engage the common folk in conversation. I wish to know their mood, their temper and their opinion of our insurrection, because I know from experience that some, perhaps many, will side with the Spaniards on whom they have come to depend. Meanwhile, also, there is one Aztécatl man—a goldsmith, elderly by now—you are to visit personally." I gave him directions. "He was my very first ally in this campaign, so I want him warned that we will be coming. He may wish to hide his gold or even leave the city with it. And, of course, pass on to him my fond regards."

"All will be done as you say, Tenamáxtzin. And Verónica? Am I to stay protectively close by her?"

"No need, I think. Verónica, you are an exceedingly resourceful girl. I want you merely to get within hearing distance of any two or more Spaniards conversing on the streets, in the markets, wherever, and eavesdrop—especially if they are in uniform or otherwise look like important persons. They will scarcely suspect that you can understand their talk, and it may be that you will learn even more than Iyac Pozonáli about the Spaniards' intended responses to our intended assault."

"Yes, my lord."

"I have also one specific instruction for you. In all that city, there is but a single white man to whom I owe the same warning that Pozonáli will give to the goldsmith. His name is Alonso de Molina—remember it—and he is a high official at the Cathedral."

"I know where it is, my lord."

"Do not go and speak that warning to him directly. He is, after all, a Spaniard. He might well seize you and hold you hostage. He most certainly would, if he should remotely suspect that you are my—my personal scribe. So write the warning on a piece of paper, fold it, put Alonso's name on the outside and—without speaking, just with gestures—give it to any lowly churchman you find loitering about the Cathedral. Then get away from there as fast as you can. And stay away."

"Yes, my lord. Anything else?"

"Just this. The most important order I can give you both. When you feel you have learned all you can, get safely out of the city, get safely back to your horses and get safely back here. Both of you. If, Iyac, you should dare to return here without Verónica... well..."

"We shall safely return, Tenamáxtzin, I kiss the earth to that. If some unforeseen evil befalls, and only one of us returns, it will be Verónica. To that, I kiss the earth four hundred times!"

When they were gone, the rest of us rather luxuriated in our new surroundings. We certainly lived well. There was more than enough cow meat to eat, of course, but our hunters ranged about the valley anyway, just to provide variety—deer and rabbits and quail and ducks and other game. They even slew two or three of the cuguars for which the mountains were named, though cuguar meat is tough to chew and not very tasty. Our fishers found the mountain streams abounding in a fish—I do not know what it is called—that made a delectable change from our mostly meat meals. Our foragers found all sorts of fruits, vegetables, roots and such. The plundered jugs of octli, chápari and Spanish wines were reserved to myself and my knights, but we now drank only sparingly of them. All we lacked was something really sweet, like the coconuts of my homeland. I do believe that many of our people—particularly the numerous slave families we had freed and brought along—would have been content to live in that valley for the rest of their lives. And they probably could have done so, unmolested by the white men, even unknown to the white men, to the end of time.

I do not mean to say that we all simply lazed and vegetated there. Though I slept at night between silken Spanish sheets and under a fine woolen Spanish blanket—feeling as if I were a Spanish marqués or viceroy—I was busy all day long. I kept my scouts roaming the countryside beyond the mountains, and reporting back to me. I strode about the valley, as a sort of inspector-in-general, because I had ordered Nochéztli and our other knights to train many more of our warriors to ride the many new horses we had acquired and to employ properly the many new arcabuces we had acquired.

When one of my scouts came to report that not far to the west of our mountains was a crossroads Spanish trading post—similar to the one we had earlier vanquished—I decided to try an experiment. I took a medium-sized force of Sobáipuri warriors, because they had not yet had the pleasure of participating in any of our battles, and because they had become proficient both at riding and at using the arcabuz, and I asked Knight Pixqui to accompany me, and we rode westward to that trading post.

I intended not really a battle, but only a feint. We galloped, hooting and howling and discharging our arcabuces, out of the woods into the open ground before the palisaded post. And, as before, from the ports in that palisade, thunder-tubes spewed a spray of lethal scraps and fragments, but I was careful to keep us out of their range, and only one of our men suffered a minor shoulder wound. We remained out there, dancing our horses back and forth, making our threatening war cries and extravagantly threatening gestures, until the stockade gate opened and a troop of mounted soldiers came galloping out. Then, pretending to be intimidated, we all turned and galloped back the way we had come. The soldiers pursued us, and I made sure that we stayed ahead of them, but always in their sight. We led them all the way back to the ravine from which we had left our valley.

Still taking care that the soldiers should not lose us in those mazes, we baited them through one very narrow notch where I had already posted arcabuz men on either side. Just as Knight Pixqui had predicted, the first discharges of those arcabuces brought down enough soldiers and their horses to block the passage for all the others behind. And those, milling about in confusion, were in a very short time destroyed by spears, arrows and boulders propelled by other warriors I had posted on the heights above. My Sobáipuri of course were pleased to confiscate the weapons and the surviving horses of all those dead Spaniards. But I was mainly pleased to have proven that our hideaway was indeed invulnerable. We could hold out here forever, if need be, against any force sent to assail us.

There came a day when several of my scouts came to tell me, really gleefully, that they had discovered a new and major target for us to attack.

"About three days east of here, Tenamáxtzin, a town almost as big as a city, but we might never have known it existed, except that we espied a mounted Spanish soldier and followed him. One of us who understands a little Spanish crept into the town behind him, and learned that it is a rich town, well built, called by the white man Aguascalientes."

"Hot Springs," I said.

"Yes, my lord. It is evidently a place to which the Spanish men and women resort for curative baths and recreations of other sorts. Rich Spanish men and women. So you can imagine the plunder we can take from it. Not to mention clean white women, for a change. I must report, though, that the town is heavily fortified, manned and armed. We cannot possibly take it without using our entire complement of warriors, both foot and mounted."

I called for Nochéztli and repeated the report. "Prepare our forces. We will march two days from now. This time I want everyone to participate, including—we will doubtless have need of them—all our tíciltin, Swaddlers and Swallowers. This will be the most ambitious, audacious assault of all we have yet made, hence perfect practice for our eventual assault on the City of Mexíco."

Fortuitously, the very next day, Pozonáli and Verónica returned to us, safely and together, and, though much fatigued from their long, hard ride, came immediately to report to me. So excited were they that they began speaking simultaneously in their separate languages of Náhuatl and Spanish.

"The goldsmith thanks you for your warning, Tenamáxtzin, and sends you his warm regards in return..."

"You are already famous in the City of Mexíco, my lord. I should say famous and feared..."

"Wait, wait," I said, laughing. "Verónica first."

"What I bring is the good news, my lord. To begin with, I did deliver your message to the Cathedral and, as you supposed, when your friend Alonso received it, whole troops of soldiers began combing the city to find the messenger who had brought it. But they could not, of course, I being indistinguishable from so many other girls like myself. And, as you commanded, I listened to many conversations. The Spaniards, by what means I do not know, are already aware that our whole army is encamped here in the Mixtóapan. So they are calling our insurrection 'the Mixton War,' and—I rejoice to report—it has much of New Spain in a panic. Whole families from the City of Mexíco and from everywhere else are crowding into the seaports—Vera Cruz and Tampico and Campeche and every other—demanding passages back to Old Spain, on any kind of vessel sailing there—galleons, caravels, victualler ships, anything. Many are saying fearfully that this is the re-conquest of The One World. It appears, my lord, that you are achieving your aim of chasing the interlopers—at least the white ones—entirely out of our lands."

"But not all of them," said Iyac Pozonáli, frowning. "Despite Coronado's having taken so many of New Spain's soldiers on his northward expedition, the Viceroy Mendoza has still a considerable force in the City of Mexíco, some hundreds of mounted and foot soldiers, and Mendoza has taken personal command of them. Furthermore, as you expected, Tenamáxtzin, many of his tame Mexíca have enlisted to fight alongside him. So have many of these other treacherous peoples—the Totonáca, the Tezcaltéca, the Acólhua—who long ago aided the Conquistador Cortés in his overthrow of Motecuzóma. For the first time ever, Mendoza is allowing those indios to ride horses and carry thunder-sticks, and he is right now busily engaged in the training of them."

"Our own people," I said sadly, "arrayed against us."

"The city will maintain a sufficient defensive force," Pozonáli went on. "Thunder-tubes and such. But I would reckon, from what I learned, that the Viceroy Mendoza plans an offensive march to rout us out of here and destroy us before we ever get near the City of Mexíco."

"Well, good luck to Mendoza," I said offhandedly. "However many his men, however well armed, they will be annihilated before they ever get to us here. I have experimented, and the Knight Pixqui was right when he said that these mountains are impregnable. In the meantime, I will be giving the viceroy further evidence of our might and our determination. Tomorrow we march east—every warrior, every horseman, every arcabuz man, every Purémpe granada-thrower, every last one of us who can wield a weapon. We are marching against a city called Hot Springs, and after we have taken that, the Viceroy Mendoza may decide to try to hide the City of Mexíco. Now, you two go and get some food and rest. I know you, Iyac, will want to be in the thick of the fight. And I shall want you near me, Verónica, to do the chronicling of this most epic of all our battles so far."

XXXII

Of the final battle of the "Mixton War"—of our defeat and the end of the Mixton War—I will speak only briefly, because it happened through my own grievous fault, and I am ashamed of that. Again, as I had done with other enemies, and even with some of the women in my life, I underestimated the cunning of my opponent. And I am paying for my mistake by lying here slowly dying—or slowly healing, I know not which, and do not much care.

My army could still be here in the Miztóapan, entire and secure and healthy and strong and ready to do battle again, had I not taken them out of this valley. Just as we had earlier baited the Spanish trading post's soldiers into ambush here, so we were baited out of our safe haven. It was the doing of the Viceroy Mendoza. He, knowing that we were invincible in these mountains, almost untouchable, contrived to lure us out of them by, in a sense, offering us Aguascalientes. I do not blame my scouts who found that town—they are dead now, like so many others—but I have no doubt that the Spanish horseman they followed to that town was playing a part in Mendoza's plan.

I took my whole army, leaving in the valley only the slaves and those males too old or too young to do battle. It was a three-day march to Hot Springs, and even before we got within sight of it, I began to suspect that something was not quite right. There were army outpost shacks, but no soldiers in them. When we approached the town, no thunder-tubes boomed out at us. When I sent my forward scouts sneaking warily into the town itself, there was no rattle of arcabuces, and the scouts came out, shrugging in puzzlement, to report that there seemed to be not a single person in the town.

It was a trap. I turned in my saddle to shout "Retreat!" But it was already too late. Arcabuces now did rattle, and from all around us. We were surrounded by Mendoza's soldiers and their indio allies.

Oh, we fought back, of course. The battle went on daylong, and many hundreds died on both sides. Death, that day, was a glutton. As I have remarked, any battle is a commotion and a confusion, and some of the dyings were done in curious ways. My knights Nochéztli and Pixqui both were pierced by balls discharged by our own arcabuz men, too recklessly employing their weapons. On the other side, Pedro de Alvarado—one of the first conquistadores in The One World, and the only one still being an active conquistador—died when he fell from his horse and the horse of another Spaniard trampled him.

Since both our armies, mine and Mendoza's, were fairly equal in numbers and armament, it should have been a pitched battle, the victory going to the bravest and strongest and most clever. But what lost it for us was this. My men courageously engaged every white soldier they encountered, but too many of them (bar the Yaki) could not bring themselves to slaughter the men of their own race—the Mexíca and Texcaltéca and others—who were fighting on Mendoza's side. To the contrary, those traitors of our own race, naturally seeking to curry favor with their Spanish masters, hesitated not at all to slaughter us. I myself took an arrow in my right side, and that surely came from no Spaniard. For all I know, it came from some unknown relative of mine.

One of our battlefield tíciltin jerked the arrow out of me—painful enough, that—then daubed the open wound with the corrosive xocóyatl—so much more painful that I actually and unmanfully screeched aloud. The tícitl could do no more for me, because next instant he fell dead of an arcabuz ball.

When finally night came down, our armies disengaged—what was left of them—and the ragged remnant of ours, those who had horses, hastily withdrew to the westward. Pozonáli, one of the few survivors whom I knew by name, found Verónica on the hilltop whence she had watched the carnage, and brought her along as we made haste to get back to our mountain sanctuary. I could barely sit my saddle, so agonizing was the pain in my side, thus I was in no condition to worry about whether we were being pursued through the night.

If we were, the pursuers never caught up to us. Three days later—days of terrible pain for me, and I was not the worst wounded of us—we arrived again at the Miztóapan, and wound our way through the maze of ravines (often losing our way, since we had not the experienced Knight Pixqui to guide us) and finally, faint with thirst and hunger and fatigue and loss of blood, found our valley again.

I have not even tried to count the survivors of the Hot Springs battle, though I could probably do that without even scribbling down the little flags and trees and dots of numbers. Several who made it safely back here have since died of their wounds, because there are no tíciltin to treat them. All our tíciltin, like all our other hundreds of hundreds, are lying dead back yonder at Hot Springs. One Yaki tícitl is still alive, still with us, and he graciously offered to come and dance and chant at me, but I would be damned to Míctlan before I would submit to that kind of doctoring. So my wound has gradually festered, gone green, oozing pus. I blaze with fever, then shiver with chill and drift in and out of delirium, as once I did in an open acáli on the Western Sea.

Verónica has faithfully and tenderly attended me, as best she can, applying hot compresses to the wound, and various tree saps and cactus juices that the old folk in camp recommend as curatives, but those things are doing no discernible good.

During one of my lucid periods, you asked, Verónica, "What do we do now, my lord?"

Trying to sound staunch and optimistic, I said, "We stay here, licking our wounds. We can hardly do anything else, and we are at least safe from attack here. I cannot even plan any further action until I am healed of this accursed injury. Then we shall see. In the meantime—I have been thinking—your chronicle of what the Spaniards call the Mixton War commenced with our devastation of Tonalá. It occurs to me that future historians of The One World might benefit from my telling and your writing of earlier events, of how this all began. Would it try your patience, dear Verónica, if I recounted to you practically my entire life?"

"Of course not, my lord. Not only am I here to serve you, I should myself be... most interested... in hearing your life story."

I meditated for some while. How to begin at the beginning? Then I smiled, as well as I was able, and said, "I think, Verónica, I have already, long ago, spoken to you the opening sentence of this chronicle."

"I believe so, too, my lord. I kept it and still have it here."

You shuffled among your sheaf of papers, brought one out and read it aloud:

"I can still see him burning."

"Yes," I said, and sighed. "Clever darling girl. Let us proceed from there."

And, over I do not know how many ensuing days, though sometimes I was gabbling in delirium or mute with pain, I recounted everything that you have so far set down. Finally I said:

"I have told you everything I can remember, even insignificant conversations and occurrences. Still, I suppose it is but a bare-bones recounting."

"No, my dear lord. Without your knowing, ever since we have been together, I have been making notes of your merest passing remarks and my own observations of you, your nature, your character. Because, to tell the truth, I loved you, my lord, even before I knew you to be my father. With your permission, I should like to intermingle those observations of mine into the chronicle. It will put flesh on the bare bones."

"By all means, my dear. You are the chronicler, and you know best. Anyway, you now know all there is to know, and all that any historian will need to know."

I paused, then went on:

"You now know also that you have a close cousin in Aztlan. If ever I recover from this wretched fever and weakness, I shall take you there, and Améyatzin will give you a warm welcome. You and Pozonáli. I do hope, child, that you will wed the lad. The gods preserved him through this last battle, and I truly believe they saved him just for you."

My mind was beginning to waver and wander, but I added, "After Aztlan, perhaps we could go on... to The Islands of the Women. I was happy there..."

"You are getting sleepy, lord father. And you have expended much energy, talking during these many days. I think you should rest now."

"Yes. Let me say just one thing more, and please put it at the end of your chronicle. Our Mixton War is lost, and rightly so. I should never have begun it. From the day of your Grandfather Mixtli's execution, I resented and resisted the aliens among us. But, over time, I have met and admired many of those aliens—the white Alonso, the black Esteban, the padre Quiroga, your mulata mother Rebeca, and finally you, dear daughter, who commingle so many different bloods. I realize now—and I accept—I am even proud—that your lovely face, Verónica, is the new face of The One World. To you and to your sons and daughters and to The One World, I wish all good things."

XXXIII

My father died in his sleep that night. I was at his pallet side, and I drew the silken sheet over his face. He is at peace—I hope in bliss—in the warriors' afterworld of one of his gods.

What is to become of the rest of us, I do not know.

Verónica Tenamáxtzin de Pozonáli

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book, like much else in the author's life, could hardly have been accomplished without the teachings, assistance, encouragement, patience and toleration, over a good many years, of a good many good friends:

The late Edward Amos, Radford, Virginia

Alex and Patti Apostolides, El Paso, Texas

The late Sadie Atkins, Paterson, New Jersey

Victor Avers, Canoga Park, California

Herman and Fran Begega, Pompton Lakes, New Jersey

Jo Bertone, Dallas, Texas

The late L. R. Boyd, Jr., Teague, Texas

The late Col. James G. Chesnutt, The Presidio, San Francisco, California

Grant Chorley, Vienna, Austria

Eva Clegg, Greensboro, North Carolina

Copycat, Feather and Ditto

Angelita Correa, San Miguel de Allende, Gto., México

Sonja Heinze Coryat, Santa Rosa, California

Dino and Martha De Laurentiis, Beverly Hills, California

Henry P. Dickerson III, Staunton, Virginia

Robert M. Elkins, Cincinnati, Ohio

Hugo and Lorraine Gerstl, Carmel, California

Robert Gleason, New York, New York

Gus Heinze, Mill Valley, California

Stephen de las Heras, New York, New York

The late Les Hicks, Hicksville, Long Island, New York

Bill and Shirley Jones, McGaheysville, Virginia

Peter Kirsch, M.D., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

The late Elizabeth Lucas, Radford, Virginia

The late A. Louis Ginsberg-Martin, Paterson, New Jersey

Donna Marxer, New York, New York

Melva Elizabeth Mann Newsom, Xenia, Ohio

Raúl G. Oviedo, M.D., Elkton, Virginia

Ernesto Pacheco, Dallas, Texas

The late Vance Packard, Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts

David and Phyllis Parker, Lexington, Virginia

Robert Pastorio, Staunton, Virginia

Sam Pinkus, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York

Evva Pryor, New York, New York

The late James Rutherfoord, Radford, Virginia

Clark L. Savage, Monterey, California

Joyce O. Servis, Caldwell, New Jersey

The late Robert Shea, Glencoe, Illinois

Lewis J. Singer, M.D., Lexington, Virginia

Shirley Snyder, Harrisonburg, Virginia

Gayle Tatarski, Reidsville, North Carolina

Neil Thornton, Tawas City, Michigan

Francesca Todaro, San Miguel de Allende, Gto., México

Frank Vos, Stamford, Connecticut

The late Edie Williams, San Francisco, California

Eugene and Ina Winick, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York

Rita Yancey, McGaheysville, Virginia

Yu Ok Ki, Taegu, Korea

Copyright © 1997 by Gary Jennings

ISBN: 0-312-86250-4