War God: Return of the Plumed Serpent

  Shikotenka nodded. Everyone should be in place now and, even if they weren’t, he wasn’t prepared to witness this slaughter a moment longer. He raised the war conch to his lips and blew a single long, furious blast.

  * * *

  ‘I’ve come for the cur,’ said Vendabal. The hunchback’s manner was more than usually surly and disrespectful.

  ‘Go and get him then,’ Cortés replied. ‘He’s tied up by the kitchen.’

  ‘No he’s not … ’

  ‘It is normal to call your leader by an honorific, Vendabal. “Sir” will do nicely, “Captain-general” if you prefer or, perhaps, “Caudillo”. I will even accept “Don Hernán” at a push. But you may not address me as though I am a common soldier.’

  ‘Sorry … Caudillo.’ Vendabal made a vain attempt to straighten, and his horrible features creased into a sycophantic leer. ‘But I’ve been hunting for that dog since I got your message, sir, and he ain’t in the camp.’

  ‘What do you mean he’s not in the camp? Of course he is. Where else can he be?’

  ‘Perhaps you should ask the boy, sir?’

  ‘Pepillo? I’ve sent him on a reconnaissance mission with Don Juan de Escalante. Won’t be back for a few days … ’

  ‘Well, there’s your answer, Captain-general. He must’ve taken the mutt with him.’

  ‘Nonsense, man. I gave strict orders that the dog was to stay behind.’ Overtaken by a sudden intuition, Cortés wheeled on Malinal who was seated on a stool just inside the door of the pavilion. ‘Do you know anything about this?’ he asked.

  ‘Pepillo take Melchior,’ she said. There was something defiant in her tone and she looked Cortés straight in the eye.

  ‘What?’ he exploded.

  ‘Pepillo take Melchior. Why not? Dog his friend.’

  ‘I see,’ said Cortés. The red tide of a great rage was building inside him, but he would not show it with Vendabal present. ‘Go!’ he told the dog handler. ‘I’ll see you get the animal the moment my page returns.’

  * * *

  Against superior numbers, the right tactics were maximum surprise and maximum ferocity. But it made things so much easier, Shikotenka reflected as he led the attack, when you commanded the best shock troops in the world.

  In seconds he’d passed the last of the huts with Chipahua right beside him and fifty elite Tlascalans formed up behind them in a thundering, unstoppable wedge. Roaring war cries, they hit the surprised, already panicking Chichemec rabble at a full charge. Shikotenka swung his macuahuitl low and lopped the left leg off a big, red-painted mercenary, who tried to bar his way, took a knife wound on his upper left arm, swung high and decapitated the man who’d given it to him, smashed his heavy hardwood shield into the face of a third attacker scattering teeth in all directions before trampling him underfoot for one of the men behind to skewer. The phalanx was a killing machine, maintaining perfect order, each Tlascalan warrior using his shield to defend the warrior next to him, each specialised unit within the whole – spearmen, axemen, swordsmen, daggermen – working in perfect coordination with the others. Gaps opened up in the Chichemec defence by the macuahuitls and hatchets were exploited by the daggermen, who finished off the maimed and the injured at close quarters while the spearmen jabbed overhead, impaling men two or three ranks in front of them whose bodies fouled the feet of those trying to flee.

  Meanwhile, other Tlascalan units closed in all around the circle to cut off every route of escape, forcing the terrified, jabbering mercenaries who sought shelter in the forest to turn back into the melee, where some even cut down their own comrades in their mad desperate rush to escape murder. A handful of Chichemecs, rather than fight the Tlascalans, were running amok amongst the captive women and girls, cutting throats, splitting heads, seeking to do whatever harm they could before they died, but Shikotenka’s corps of twenty archers, darting around the edge of the fight looking for targets, put arrows into every one and the captives, with howls of fury, rose up and finished them off, tearing them limb from limb.

  Shikotenka and Chipahua spotted the Chichemec leader at the same moment and began to work their way towards him through the heaving, bloody scrum. He was a big man with his head shaved, but for a crest of thick hair running from his brow to the nape of his neck. He’d lost his macuahuitl but had armed himself with a huge war axe, and as Shikotenka and Chipahua converged on him, he felled a Tlascalan with a killing blow to the temple, then hacked his weapon so hard between the ribs of another that it became lodged there. Chipahua darted forward and grabbed his arms as he tried to tug the weapon free; Shikotenka dropped to the ground and used his dagger to cut the Chichemec’s hamstrings, crippling him in an instant. The man fell to the ground screaming and gushing blood as Chipahua prised his fingers away from the axe haft and trampled his face to silence him.

  A few moments later the short, intense battle was over, the few surviving Chichemecs were rounded up, and Shikotenka dragged their unconscious leader to the edge of the plaza where he propped him against the wall of a hut.

  ‘What shall we do with the others?’ asked Chipahua, glancing in the direction of the remaining twenty or thirty dejected mercenaries now held captive.

  ‘Use knives,’ snarled Shikotenka. ‘Gut them like peccaries.’

  As the executions began, the Chichemec leader’s eyes flickered open and filled with hate. ‘Welcome back,’ said Shikotenka, looming over him. ‘I’ve got a few questions to ask you before you die.’

  * * *

  The Chichemec proved to be surprisingly hard-bitten, and night had fallen – after hours of patient torture – before he told Shikotenka the news that he already half expected to hear; news that had been conveyed to him by Huicton months before.

  ‘The Great Speaker wishes to honour Hummingbird.’

  ‘That’s obvious, you stupid bastard!’ Shikotenka turned the point of his knife, which was buried between the metacarpals of the Chichemec’s hand. ‘But why do you take only female victims?’

  A groan. ‘Because that’s what Hummingbird wants.’

  Shikotenka turned to Chipahua. ‘Makes no sense,’ he remarked. ‘Hummingbird’s a god of war. Why would he want female sacrifices?’

  ‘Should be warriors,’ grunted Chipahua. ‘Fine warriors with big tepullis for the war god.’

  The Chichemec laughed suddenly, his face twisted into a foul grimace and he coughed up a spray of blood. ‘Hummingbird wants women,’ he croaked. ‘Women and girls, the younger the better.’ A horrible leer: ‘He wants them innocent. He wants them pure.’

  Shikotenka leaned forward and stared into the mercenary’s eyes. ‘Is that why you don’t rape them,’ he asked?

  ‘Pain of death if we rape them,’ the Chichemec coughed. ‘Moctezuma wants only virgins for Hummingbird.’

  It was all beginning to make a twisted kind of sense, Shikotenka realised. There had been a few escapees from the raids over the past weeks, and more than one had reported that female prisoners were physically inspected to discover if they were intact; those found not to be virgins were killed. This would explain why the capture squads were focusing ever more intently on targeting female children rather than grown women during their raids.

  Innocence, Shikotenka reflected … purity. These were the key words and thoughts; this was the new information he’d extracted during the interrogation.

  Hummingbird didn’t want virgins for their virginity.

  What he wanted was their innocence!

  Somehow the murder of innocents empowered both the war god and that vile creature Moctezuma who served as his regent on earth.

  Judging there was nothing else to be learned from the Chichemec, Shikotenka opened the man’s throat with a swift cut from ear to ear. He stood and looked around at his warriors. Only five had been killed in the fight against the mercenaries and no more than a dozen injured. It was a good result.

  ‘Do we stay here, or head home?’ Chipahua asked.

  ‘We head home,’ said Shikotenka, glanci
ng at the wound on his left bicep, an ugly rip still dripping blood.

  ‘You need to bind that,’ observed Chipahua.

  ‘No time,’ said Shikotenka. If we march through the night we should reach Tlascala by noon tomorrow. I need to talk to my father and Maxixcatzin. We’ve got plans to make.’

  * * *

  Long after dark, with most of the crew who weren’t on watch already snoring in their hammocks, Pepillo brought Melchior to a quiet corner on the main deck of the Santa Theresa to continue his education. The young lurcher was extremely clever and attentive and already knew how to sit, stand, stay, come hither and walk to heel on command. Tonight’s lessons were ‘leave it’, ‘take it’, and ‘bring it’, and for these Pepillo was using a bone to which Melchior was very much attached. He dropped the bone to the deck, hauled Melchior back by means of his leash when he darted forward and ordered him to ‘leave it’. He repeated this exercise a second and a third time. By the fourth try, Melchior had got the idea, and when Pepillo said, ‘Leave it!’ the dog waited, panting, eyeing the bone but not going for it. ‘Good boy,’ Pepillo said, slipping him one of the scraps he’d collected earlier from the galley and further rewarding him with elaborate praise and hugs. ‘Very good boy!’ He took off the leash, dropped the bone again with the command ‘Leave it!’ and Melchior remained still, ignoring temptation, looking up adoringly at his master and wagging his tail. Pepillo gave him another scrap of meat and rewarded him with further hugs and praise.

  ‘So that’s how it’s done,’ came a gruff voice, very close.

  Pepillo looked round to see that Juan de Escalante had approached so silently that even Melchior, intent on his tricks, hadn’t noticed.

  ‘I’d always wondered,’ the captain continued, ‘how dogs were trained. Where did you learn this thoroughly useful skill?’

  ‘I was raised by the Dominicans, sir, in their monastery in Santiago. We kept two dogs there to catch rats. Brother Rodriguez trained them and I helped, sir.’

  ‘Ah … Brother Rodriguez, the librarian? I met him once. Seemed like a nice old duffer. Not like that bastard Muñoz who disappeared when we were on Cozumel. Quite a mystery, eh?’

  Pepillo bit his tongue – Muñoz’s disappearance was no mystery to him – and stayed silent.

  ‘You worked for Muñoz, didn’t you?’

  ‘I was to be his page,’ Pepillo admitted, ‘but the caudillo required my services.’

  ‘And you’re happy serving the caudillo?’

  ‘Oh yes, sir. It’s a privilege. I’m learning a lot.’

  ‘Including the local lingo! I saw you jabbering away with that Totonac today.’

  It was true, Pepillo had been trying to talk with Meco most of the afternoon while the Santa Theresa sailed steadily north along the coast of Mexico. The two of them had managed to communicate reasonably well with a mixture of sign language and Pepillo’s limited but growing Nahuatl vocabulary.

  ‘I hope I will be able to interpret for you properly, sir, when we get where we’re going. I’ll try my best.’

  There was a kindly twinkle in Escalante’s blue eyes and his lean, weather-beaten face creased into a smile. ‘I’m sure you will, lad,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you will.’

  Pepillo had not had occasion to get to know the captain well in the months since the expedition had sailed from Cuba, but what little he had seen of him – a dashing warrior on the battlefield, a skilled sailor who treated his crew with respect – made him instinctively like and respect the man.

  ‘You named him after your friend,’ Escalante now said, looking down at the dog.

  ‘I did, sir.’

  ‘He was a good lad. He fought well atop the pyramid at Potonchan. I was sorry he died.’

  ‘I too, sir.’

  ‘I’m told you fought bravely yourself,’ Escalante added.

  ‘It was nothing,’ Pepillo said, feeling suddenly embarrassed. ‘I froze up with fear for a while, then I stuck my spear in an Indian. That was about it.’

  ‘It takes a brave man to admit to fear,’ Escalante said softly. ‘It was your first action?’

  Pepillo gulped and nodded. He didn’t suppose the killing of Muñoz, which had anyway been done by Díaz and his friends Mibiercas and La Serna, really counted. ‘Yes, sir, my first action.’

  ‘So I take it you’ve never been taught how to wield a sword?’

  ‘Never in my life, sir.’

  ‘Would you like to learn?’

  Pepillo’s heart leapt. Reading Amadis de Gaula had fired him with a very private and secret ambition to become, one day, a swordsman and a hero of renown. But that ambition could never be achieved if he didn’t even know how to use a sword.

  ‘I’d love to learn, sir,’ he blurted excitedly. ‘I can’t think of anything else I’d rather do more.’

  ‘Good! Then you shall have your wish. Meet me here tomorrow morning an hour after dawn and I’ll give you your first lesson.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. You’re very kind. I’ll be here, sir.’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ grinned Escalante. ‘Oh, and stop calling me “Sir”, will you! Don Juan will do very well.’

  * * *

  Coldly furious and silent, Cortés had dismissed Malinal right after Vendabal’s departure from the pavilion and sought no further communication with her that day. She was now in Puertocarrero’s quarters, struggling to avoid the foul-smelling Spaniard’s latest attempt to penetrate her, when a messenger came rapping at the door and she leapt up to answer.

  ‘The caudillo requires your presence,’ the boy said with a cheeky look at Malinal’s half-clad form, ‘quick as you like.’

  ‘It’s late,’ complained Puertocarrero from the makeshift bed of blankets strewn on the floor. ‘Can’t it wait till morning?’

  ‘The caudillo says now, sir.’

  ‘Then we’ll both come,’ said Puertocarrero, standing, his small pink tepulli fully erect in its nest of furious red hair.

  ‘The caudillo’s orders are for me to bring the interpreter only,’ said the boy, suppressing a giggle that brought Malinal dangerously close to a laugh herself. ‘He was quite definite about that, sir.’

  Puertocarrero’s erection was wilting fast. Seemingly aware of it for the first time, he snatched up a sheet to cover himself. ‘Oh very well, go then,’ he snapped at Malinal. ‘But be quick about it. You’ve a woman’s duties to perform here.’

  When Malinal entered the pavilion she found Cortés in a better mood than when she had left him, naked but for a length of cloth around his waist, a smile on his face and a glass of wine in his hand. ‘Here, drink this,’ he said pouring another and passing it to her.

  She accepted, cautiously. The drink the Spaniards called wine was tasty but made her head spin; she had taken some on board the caudillo’s ship the first night he’d seduced her and it had made her feel foolish and wanton. No doubt he hoped it would elicit the same feelings in her now. She took a sip. ‘You want see me?’ she said. ‘Got some interpret to do?’

  ‘No, my dear. No work tonight, only play.’ He moved in on her fast, enclosed her in a fierce embrace and kissed her. She tasted the wine on his tongue and broke free, almost dropping her glass. ‘You sex me now and Puertocarrero find out,’ she said, taking another, longer sip and looking Cortés knowingly in the eye.

  ‘Damn Puertocarrero.’

  ‘Damn him very good but if he smell you on me he beat me sure. Maybe kill.’

  ‘Do you think I’d allow that?’ Cortés asked. He took her glass from her hand and set it down with his own on his writing table before forcing himself on her again. This time she returned his embrace, caressing his hair and responding with enthusiasm to his kiss. She felt his hand lift the hem of her robe and part her thighs, felt her loins melt in automatic response, then jerked back—

  ‘No, Hernán! Not now! Not good!’

  ‘Yes, now! Yes good!’ He stroked the moist lips of her tepilli, opening her and slipping a finger inside her, finding the hard knot of the
neck of her womb as he shoved her back to lie across his desk, sweeping maps and papers to the floor. There came a crash as the wine glasses followed. ‘No, Hernán!’ she beat feebly at his face. ‘Puertocarrero maybe follow, maybe hear us.’

  He ignored her, lifted her robe over her head and cast it aside, leaving her naked; kissed her breasts, softly biting her nipples, moved down to her belly, kissed and sucked her tepilli, his tongue hot and eager, then moved up her body again, entered her with his tepulli – so much bigger, so much nicer than Puertocarrero’s poor thing! – and began to thrust rhythmically.

  ‘Wait!’ she cried wriggling away from him, pushing her hand against the matt of dark hair covering his chest.

  ‘Wait be damned!’ He grasped her by the hips and pulled her down onto him, but once more she fought away. ‘Pepillo,’ she said, ‘his dog, what you do?’

  Sudden fury, combined with disbelief, raged in the caudillo’s eyes as it had this morning. ‘You’re talking to me about Pepillo now? You’re talking about that bloody dog now?’

  ‘Pepillo my friend. He good boy. Don’t want you hurt him. Want you be kind.’ Malinal could cry at will, a skill she’d learnt in Tenochtitlan, and wept now, tears gushing hot down her cheeks.

  Cortés’s anger passed as swiftly as it had appeared. ‘Come come, my love,’ he crooned, ‘don’t cry.’ His tepulli found her tepilli again, the rhythmic, pleasant thrusting resumed. ‘I won’t hurt the boy, I promise.’

  ‘You let him keep dog?’

  ‘Dear god, woman!’

  Malinal clenched her buttocks, made a circling motion with her hips that no man she’d ever known could resist. ‘Let him keep dog,’ she urged again. ‘Master, please, do this for me.’

  Another swirl of her hips and Cortés groaned, his thrusting becoming stronger. She tried to pull away from him again but he stopped her with a gentle touch of his hand. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘you win. I’ll let Pepillo keep his damned dog and I won’t punish him. You have my word on it.’