Still higher up the chain of honour, and again distributed everywhere across the army, were those who had been admitted to the military orders of the Jaguar and the Eagle. These might be the sons of nobles, in some cases unblooded but trained for war in one of the great military academies, or commoners who had taken four prisoners in battle. The jaguar knights wore the skins of jaguars and ferocious, garishly painted wooden helmets in the form of snarling jaguar heads. The eagle knights wore cotton bodysuits embroidered with the feathers of golden eagles, and wooden helmets in the form of eagle’s heads.
A mass of warriors, their hair cut to a distinctive crest dividing the scalp, marked concentrations of men with more than six captives to their credit, who fought in pairs and had taken a vow never to retreat once battle had begun.
Even more formidable were the Cuahchics, their scalps shaved except for a lock of hair braided with a red ribbon above the left ear. Each Cuahchic’s head was painted half blue and half red, or in some cases half blue and half yellow. They, too, had taken at least six captives, but they had also performed twenty acts of conspicuous bravery in battle.
Shikotenka grimaced, recalling previous occasions when he’d faced the Cuahchics. He would prefer not to face them again tonight if he could possibly avoid it.
But whatever would be would be. He dismissed the painted warriors from his mind and turned his gaze towards the centre of the camp. Teams of porters and labourers had been working there since morning to fit together the huge billowing pavilion of the Snake Woman, commander-in-chief of this colossal field army – who was, of course, a man.
Indeed, as far back as anyone could remember, it was an unexplained mystery that the revered Snake Woman of the Mexica, their highest-ranking official after the Great Speaker, always was and always had been a man.
The present incumbent, Coaxoch, now in his early fifties and enormously fat, had once been a renowned warrior. Moctezuma had appointed him soon after he became Speaker sixteen years ago and Coaxoch had remained his closest adviser and confidant ever since. A blow against Coaxoch was therefore a blow against Moctezuma himself and thus against the pride of the Mexica nation. It would evoke an immediate and, Shikotenka hoped, rash response. That was why he was here, on this grassy hill, crammed into this rocky crevice, watching and counting. If the gods were with him and blessed his plan, the result would be spectacular harm to the enemy.
A surge of movement in the southwestern quadrant of the camp caught his attention. He squinted. Shaded by splendid umbrellas of quetzal feathers, a procession of nobles and knights was advancing towards the centre. Shikotenka narrowed his eyes again and this time clearly made out the corpulent form of Coaxoch amongst the feathers, sprawled on a litter carried on the shoulders of half a dozen brawny slaves.
Conspicuous in the procession were four high-ranking nobles attired with spectacular radiance in elaborate rainbow-plumed headdresses and mosaic face masks of costly jade. On their backs, jutting an arm’s-length above their heads, they wore the green triple-pennant standards of regiment generals. Shikotenka bit back the roar of loathing that rose automatically to his lips as he recognised Coaxoch’s sons, promoted far above their station on account of their father’s influence with Moctezuma, and already infamous for their foolishness and cruelty. The year before he’d met and instantly detested Mahuizoh, the eldest of them, when he’d led the Mexica delegation at so-called ‘peace talks’ with his people. How could he forget the man’s bombastic, bullying manner and his loud-mouthed threats of rapine and ruin if his exorbitant demands for tribute were not met? Shikotenka uttered a silent prayer to the gods to put Mahuizoh under his knife tonight.
More movement in the northeast marked the location of a second procession, also advancing on the centre. It was made up of several hundred warrior priests dressed in tall headdresses and bodysuits embroidered with a background of black feathers to represent the night sky and patterns of white feathers to represent the stars. With them, bound together at the neck by heavy wooden halters, they dragged a hundred captives daubed with chalk paint and dressed in ungainly clothes of white paper.
The two processions converged in front of Coaxoch’s pavilion. There, with much burning of copal, blaring of conches and beating of gongs and drums, the priests set up their altar and a carved wooden idol of Hummingbird. Propping himself on one elbow, conversing with his sons who had gathered close around him, Coaxoch looked on from his litter.
Shikotenka didn’t doubt that every one of the prisoners who were about to be sacrificed were Tlascalans like himself. For, unlike the host of other free kingdoms that had once flourished in the region, Tlascala had always rejected the offers of vassal status and the payment of extortionate annual tributes to the Mexica in return for peace; as a result, it was the target of continuous raids by Moctezuma’s armies. These attacks were intended to punish Tlascalan defiance and provide an object lesson to neighbouring peoples of the costs of independence. But their larger purpose was to ensure a steady supply of prisoners for sacrifice to the bloodthirsty pantheon at the apex of which sat Hummingbird, the divine source of all Mexica violence, who was reputed to have said in the long ago: ‘My mission and my task is war. I will watch and join issue with all manner of nations, and that without mercy.’
In the past three months some terrible sense of urgency, some looming supernatural threat that called for a great mass offering to Hummingbird, had aroused the Mexica to new heights of cruelty. Shikotenka’s spies thought the whole matter might be connected to the appearance of a small band of mysterious white-skinned beings, possibly deities, who had arrived in the lands of the Maya some months before, in immense boats that moved by themselves without paddles, fought and won a great battle using devastating, unknown weapons and then returned to the ocean whence they had come. Much about this strange encounter suggested the legends of the Feathered Serpent, Quetzalcoatl, and his oft-prophesied return, something that Moctezuma as a devotee of Hummingbird would certainly have cause to fear and attempt to delay or even prevent by offering extravagant sacrifices to the war god. This was only a theory at this stage, but it seemed plausible to Shikotenka in the light of Moctezuma’s famously superstitious nature, and it would certainly explain why Coaxoch’s thirty-two thousand warriors had been diverted from other duties and put in the field with the exclusive task of gathering in huge numbers of new victims. They had already ravaged a dozen Tlascalan cities, seized thousands of young men and women and dragged them off to the prison pens a hundred miles away in Tenochtitlan, the Mexica capital, to be fattened for the coming holocaust. Typical of the Mexica, however, a few of the captives – like these poor wretches now being dragged to the altar – had remained with the armies to be sacrificed at important staging posts on the march route.
The conches blared again and the snakeskin drum began to beat. Shikotenka clenched his fists as the first screams of pain went up, but there was nothing he could do for his brothers and sisters now suffering under the Mexica knife. The only satisfaction came from the thought of his own elite corps of fifty warriors waiting for his orders an hour’s hard run to the south.
While the sacrifices were performed, the frothing heart blood collected and drunk by the most senior nobility, and the bodies of the victims butchered for the cooking pot, swarms of workers continued to put the finishing touches to the Snake Woman’s pavilion. Not until mid-afternoon, however, when he’d witnessed the death of the last victim and drunk his share of the blood, did Coaxoch allow himself to be carried into the huge structure. He was followed by a dozen voluptuous slave girls, dressed in body-hugging tunics woven from yellow and green parrot feathers. Moments later his litter-bearers emerged but the women remained. From time to time other slaves continued to come and go carrying food and drink.
Suppressing his rage, Shikotenka stayed where he was in the rocky crevice, not moving a muscle, observing everything that was going on down below. For a while he became lost in thought, calculating distances, comparing a variety of poss
ible entrance and exit strategies, quietly figuring out how he was going to get his warriors into Coaxoch’s pavilion tonight and do the maximum damage there.
It was obvious that each man must go by a different route. In groups of even two or three they would attract attention but alone, dressed in a variety of captured Mexica battle uniforms, they’d have the best chance of blending in with the enormous crowd of warriors and camp followers. If all went well they would reassemble in front of the pavilion by the idol of Hummingbird and go straight into a devastating attack that the overconfident Mexica would not be expecting and would not have guarded against.
So much for the easy part of the plan.
Where things got difficult was the escape from the midst of an alerted and maddened foe.
But Shikotenka had supreme confidence in the battle skills of his fifty. They would have the advantage of surprise and momentum, of superior organisation, of their thirst for retribution and of the love of the gods. They would burst through the Mexica ranks like a flood and be off and away into the mountains before anyone could stop them.
They would of course be followed.
But that, too, was part of the plan …
Shikotenka’s daydream of revenge was cut short by a sound.
A little, scraping, scratching sound.
He stayed frozen, unmoving, every sense alert.
Scratch … scrape … scratch … scratch …
The source was just twenty paces upslope and moving stealthily down towards him.
Scrape, scrape, scratch …
It was one man, Shikotenka thought, a soldier wearing heavy-duty battle sandals – not an experienced tracker, or he wouldn’t have heard him at all, but someone crafty and determined enough to work his way round above him and get this close without detection.
Were there others with him? Perhaps further up the slope, out of earshot?
If yes, Shikotenka knew he was done for.
If no, there was still a chance.
He drew his knife.
Chapter Seven
Tenochtitlan, Thursday 18 February 1519
Tozi led the woman away from the priests and rapidly back through the crowd to the massive rear wall of the pen. There was a negotiable ribbon of space here, where people did not want to be crushed against the wall. Tozi slipped into the gap, clutching Coyotl. The woman was right behind them.
‘What do we do now?’ she asked. She looked flushed and excited.
‘We go this way,’ said Tozi.
The prison was big enough to vanish in; indeed Tozi had spent the last seven months doing precisely that. So she was drawing on deep experience when she led the woman on the rat run along the rear wall, away from the priests, and back eventually into a far-off sector of the crowd.
She found a clear area of floor and sank down with Coyotl, his feverish, damp forehead resting on her shoulder.
The woman sank down beside them. ‘You did really well,’ she told Tozi. ‘In fact I’d say you’re amazing.’
‘I didn’t make us disappear like you thought I would.’
‘But what you did was just as clever. Another kind of magic. What’s your name?’
‘I’m Tozi …’
‘I’m Malinal,’ the woman said. Then unexpectedly she leant forward and wrapped Tozi and Coyotl in a warm embrace that went on for an embarrassingly long time. When it was over she said: ‘Are we safe now?’
Tozi shook her head. ‘They’re not going to go away quietly after such a riot. They’re going to be all over us looking for ringleaders, taking more of us for sacrifice.’ As she spoke she set Coyotl down on his side, arranging his hand for a pillow. He mumbled but did not awake.
‘He sleeps a lot, the little one?’ queried Malinal.
‘I gave him chalalatli root,’ said Tozi, ‘for head pains and fever.’
‘Ah, then he’ll sleep through anything … Though only the gods know where you obtained such a medicine.’
Tozi ignored the comment. She reached out and touched Malinal’s face – those wide oval eyes, that full mouth, that perfect skin. ‘Your beauty is your strength,’ she said, ‘but it works against you in here—’
‘I don’t …’
Tozi frowned at the interruption: ‘No, it’s true. Being beautiful makes you stand out and that’s dangerous. The first rule of staying alive is not to get noticed.’
Malinal spread her hands: ‘So what should I do?’
‘We’ll start by cutting your hair.’ From one of her hidden pockets Tozi produced a flint, about the length of a man’s middle finger. The flint had razor-sharp serrated edges and narrowed to a needle point.
‘Where did you get that?’ Malinal gasped.
Tozi grinned. ‘I’m a finder,’ she said, ‘and a keeper.’ She signalled Malinal to sit in front of her.
The older woman hesitated.
‘There’s no TIME,’ Tozi yelled.
With a shrug Malinal sat and presented her head to Tozi, who at once began to shear off her long thick hair in great clumps. A woman passing by stopped a few paces away to stare at the growing pile of fallen tresses. Her eyes were dull and her flesh had the pudgy, tortilla consistency of those who ate their fill of the rich diet of the fattening pen. ‘Can I take some hair?’ she asked. She had a stupefied look, as though her brain were already dead, anticipating the sacrifice of her body.
‘Take as much as you want,’ said Tozi.
Human hair was a valuable commodity in the pen: threads and fibres were made from it, clothes were repaired with it; it could be used to improvise pillows. To cheat the sacrificial knife one prisoner had recently hung herself with a rope of woven human hair. Under less threatening circumstances, therefore, Tozi would have guarded such a treasure fiercely for use or barter, but there was no time for that today. As other women approached she invited them all to help themselves and they gathered it up in their aprons and dresses.
‘You’re generous with my hair,’ said Malinal.
‘We don’t want the priests to find a single strand. Might make them think someone was trying to change her looks. Do you know a better way to get rid of it?’
Malinal laughed: ‘You’re very smart, Tozi. Tell me about yourself.’
‘What about myself?’
‘Like your home town. Let’s start with that. Where do you come from?’
‘Oh, here and there.’
‘Here and there? What does that mean? Are you Mexica? Are you Tlascalan?’
‘Not Mexica. Not Tlascalan.’
‘Hmm, a puzzle. I like puzzles. You speak Nahuatl like a native. But with a certain … accent. Are you perhaps Tepanec? Acolhua? Xochimilca?’
‘I belong to none of those peoples.’
‘Quite the girl of mystery then …’
A bolt of pain shot through Tozi’s head. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘I’ve lived in Tenochtitlan since I was five, OK? My mother brought me here. I never knew my father. My mother died when I was seven. She said we came from Aztlán. That’s all I know.’
The enchanted realm of Aztlán needed no further explanation. There lay the Seven Caves of Chicomoztoc, where masters of divine wisdom and workers of the highest magic were said to have concealed themselves from common sight. It was the home of the gods and the mystic place of origin of the Mexica, the Tlascalans and all other Nahuatl-speaking peoples.
But no one came from Aztlán any more. No one had come from Aztlán for hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of years. Indeed no one today even had the faintest idea where it was.
‘The people who came from Aztlán called themselves the Aztecs,’ remembered Malinal.
‘So I suppose that makes me an Aztec,’ said Tozi. Wanting to divert attention from herself she asked, ‘And you? Where do you come from? You speak Nahuatl like a native too.’
Malinal laughed: ‘I have a gift for languages but my mother tongue is Maya.’
Tozi had finished the haircut. ‘So how come you ended up here?’ she asked as she stood back to admire her
handiwork.
Before Malinal could answer they both became aware of a commotion in the crowd, a ripple, a wave of disturbance, screams. ‘We need to run again,’ Tozi said. She stooped to lift Coyotl but Malinal was ahead of her: ‘I’ll carry him awhile. You lead the way.’
As Malinal supported the little boy’s bony bottom with her right forearm, manoeuvring his floppy head to rest on her right shoulder, he woke up, looked her in the eye and asked drowsily, ‘Who are you?’
‘I’m a friend,’ said Malinal.
‘Excuse me, but how do I know that?’
Tozi appeared at Coyotl’s side, mopped his damp hair back from his brow. ‘Her name is Malinal,’ she told him. ‘She is truly our friend.’
‘Well … If Tozi says you’re a friend then I know you’re a friend,’ said Coyotl. He closed his eyes, dropped his head back on Malinal’s shoulder and was instantly asleep again.
Tozi walked fast but she hadn’t gone two hundred paces when movement ahead stopped her. She heard more screams and a hoarse, muffled shout. A line of priests was approaching from that direction as well! She shot off at a tangent, looking back to see that Malinal was still following with Coyotl, but within a hundred paces she was brought to a halt again by more priests and enforcers. Clearly a massive cull was in progress and victims were being rounded up in every part of the prison.
She tried twice more in different directions but always with the same result. A ring of priests and enforcers was closing in and there would be no escaping it.
‘Very well then,’ said Tozi. There was no point in even trying the fog with so many priests coming at her. ‘We’ll just have to stay here and not be seen …’
‘You mean disappear?’ Malinal said hopefully.
‘I mean not be seen.’ Tozi looked around. ‘We need mud,’ she said. ‘Now.’
Malinal rubbed at the dry earth with her toe. ‘There is no mud,’ she said.