Cuitláhuac said grimly, “Better you let me take warriors and make life impossible for them.”
Motecuzóma still said no. “I prefer to preserve an illusion of amiability as long as the pretense may serve our purpose. Let the sorcerers curse and afflict that company until they turn back of their own accord, not knowing it was our doing. Let them report to their King that the land is unhealthy and impenetrable, but give no bad report of us.”
So the court sorcerers went scurrying eastward, disguised as common travelers. Now, sorcerers may be capable of doing many strange and wonderful things beyond the power of ordinary folk, but the impediments they put in the way of Cortés proved pitifully ineffectual. First, in the trail ahead of the marching company, they stretched between trees some thin threads on which hung blue papers marked with mysterious designs. Although those barriers were supposed to be impassable by any but sorcerers, the horse She-Mule, leading the train, unconcernedly broke through them, and probably not its rider Cortés nor anyone else even noticed the things. The sorcerers sent word back to Motecuzóma, not that they had failed, but that the horses possessed some sorcery which defeated that particular stratagem.
What they did next was secretly to meet with the quimíchime traveling unsuspected with the train, and arrange to have those mice insinuate into the white men’s rations some ceiba sap and tónaltin fruits. The sap of the ceiba tree, when ingested by a person, makes that person so hungry that he eats voraciously of everything on which he can get his hands and teeth, until, in only a matter of days, he becomes so fat that he cannot move. At least, so say the sorcerers; I have never witnessed the phenomenon. But the tonal fruit demonstrably does work mischief, though of a less spectacular nature. The tonal is what you call the prickly pear, the fruit of the nopáli cactus, and the early-arriving Spaniards did not know to peel it carefully before biting into it. So it was the expectation of the sorcerers that the white men would be intolerably tormented when the tiny, invisible but painful prickles got irremovably into their fingers and Hps and tongues. The tonal does something else besides. Anyone who eats its red pulp urinates an even brighter red urine, and a man passing what looks like blood may be terrified by the certainty that he is mortally ill.
If the ceiba sap made any of the white men fat, none of them got so fat as to be immobilized. If the white men cursed the tónaltin needles, or were dismayed when they apparently leaked blood, that did not stop them either. Perhaps their beards gave them some protection against the prickles and, for all I know, they always urinated red. But it is more likely that the woman Malíntzin, knowing how easily her new comrades could be poisoned, paid close attention to what they ate, and showed them how to eat tónaltin, and told them what to expect afterward. At any rate, the white men kept moving inexorably westward.
When Motecuzóma’s mice brought him word of his sorcerers’ futility, they brought another and even more worrisome report. Cortés’s company was passing through the lands of many minor tribes resident in those mountains, tribes like the Tepeyahuáca, the Xica, and others who had never been very amenable to paying tribute to our Triple Alliance. At each village, the marching Totonáca soldiers would call out, “Come! Join us! Rally to Cortés! He leads us to free ourselves from the detested Motecuzóma!” And those tribes did willingly contribute many warriors. So, although by then several white men were being carried in litters because they had injured themselves by falling off their stumbling horses, and although numbers of the lowland Totonáca had dropped by the wayside when they were made ill by the thin air of those heights, Cortés’s company did not dwindle but increased in strength.
“You hear, Revered Brother!” Cuitláhuac stormed at Motecuzóma. “The creatures even dare to boast that they are coming to confront you personally! We have every excuse to swoop upon them, and now is the time to do it. As the Lord Mixtli predicted, they are nearly helpless in those mountains. We need not fear their animals or weapons. You can no longer say wait!”
“I say wait,” Motecuzóma replied, imperturbable. “And I have good reason. Waiting will save many lives.”
Cuitláhuac literally snarled, “Tell me: when in all of history has any single life ever been saved?”
Motecuzóma looked annoyed and said, “Very well, then, I speak of not cutting unnecessarily short the life of any Mexícatl soldier. Know this, Brother. Those outlanders are now approaching the eastern border of Texcála, the nation that has for so long repelled the fiercest assaults of even us Mexíca. That land will not be any more ready to welcome another enemy of a different color coming from a different direction. Let the Texcaltéca fight the invaders, and we Mexíca will profit in at least two respects. The white men and their Totonáca will most surely be vanquished, but I also trust that the Texcaltéca will suffer sufficient losses that we can strike them immediately afterward and, at last, defeat them utterly. If in the process we should find any white men still surviving, we will give them succor and shelter. It will appear to them that we have fought solely to rescue them. We will have won their gratitude and that of their King Carlos. Who can say what further benefits may accrue to us? So we will continue to wait.”
If Motecuzóma had confided to Texcála’s ruler Xicoténca what we had learned of the white men’s fighting capabilities and limitations, the Texcaltéca would wisely have pounced upon the white men somewhere in the steep mountains of which their nation has an abundance. Instead, Xicoténca’s son and war chief, Xicoténca the Younger, chose to make his stand on one of Texcála’s few level grounds of great expanse. In the traditional manner, he arrayed his troops in preparation for fighting one of the traditional battles—in which both opponents poised their forces, exchanged the traditional formalities, and then rushed together to pit human strength against human strength. Xicoténca may have heard rumors that the new enemy possessed more than human strength, but he had no way of knowing that the new enemy cared not a little finger for our world’s traditions and our established rules of war.
As we in Tenochtítlan heard later, Cortés walked out of a wood on the edge of that plain, leading his four hundred fifty white soldiers and by then about three thousand warriors of the Totonáca and other tribes, to find himself facing, on the other side of that ground, a solid wall of Texcaltéca, at least ten thousand of them; some reports said as many as thirty thousand. Even if Cortés had been deranged by disease, as alleged, he would have recognized the formidability of his opponents. They were garbed in their quilted armor of yellow and white. They bore their many great feather banners, variously worked with the wide-winged golden eagle of Texcála and the white heron symbol of Xicoténca. They threateningly thumped their war drums and played the shrill war whistle on their flutes. Their spears and maquáhuime flashed brilliant lights from the clean black obsidian that thirsted to be reddened.
Cortés must have wished then that he had better allies than his Totonáca, with their weapons made mostly of sawfish snouts and sharpened bones, their unwieldy shields which were nothing but the carapaces of sea turtles. But if Cortés was at all worried, he remained calm enough to keep his most outlandish weapon concealed. The Texcaltéca saw only him and those of his army who were afoot. All the horses, including his own, were still in the wood, and at his command they stayed there, out of sight of the defenders of Texcála.
As tradition dictated, several Texcaltéca lords stepped forward from their ranks and crossed the green plain between the two armies, and ceremoniously presented the symbolic weapons, the feather mantles and shields, to declare that a state of hostility existed. Cortés deliberately lengthened that ceremony by asking that the meaning of it be explained to him. And I should remark that Aguilar was by then seldom needed as an intermediate interpreter; the woman Malíntzin had exerted herself to learn Spanish, and she had progressed rapidly; after all, bed is the best place to learn any language. So, after acknowledging the Texcaltéca’s declaration, Cortés made one of his own, unrolling a scroll and reading from it while Malíntzin translated to the waiti
ng lords. I can repeat it from memory, for he made the same proclamation outside every village, town, city, and nation that shut itself against his approach. He first demanded that he be let enter without hindrance, and then he said:
“But if you will not comply, then, with the help of God, I will enter by force. I will make war against you with the utmost violence. I will bind you to the yoke of obedience to our Holy Church and our King Carlos. I will take your wives and children, and make them slaves, or sell them, according to His Majesty’s pleasure. I will seize your belongings, and do you all the mischief in my power, regarding you as rebellious subjects who maliciously refuse to submit to their lawful sovereign. Therefore, all ensuing bloodshed and calamity are to be imputed to you, and not to His Majesty or to me or to the gentlemen who serve under me.”
It can be imagined that the Texcaltéca lords were not much pleased to be called subjects of any alien, or to be told that they were disobeying any alien in defending their own frontier. If anything, those haughty words only heightened their desire for bloody battle, and the bloodier the better. So they made no reply, but turned and stalked back the long distance to where their warriors were more and more loudly whooping and making their flutes shriek and their drums throb.
But that exchange of formalities had given Cortés’s men ample time to assemble and position their ten big-mouthed cannons and the four smaller ones, and to charge them not with house-battering balls but with scraps of jagged metal, broken glass, rough gravel, and the like. The harquebuses were prepared and set upon their supports and aimed, and the crossbows were readied. Cortés quickly gave commands, and Malíntzin repeated them to the allied warriors, and then she hurried to safety, back the way they had come. Cortés and his men stood or knelt while others, staying in the woods, sat upon ther horses. And they all waited patiently, while the great wall of yellow and white suddenly surged forward, and a rain of arrows arced from it across the field between, and the wall resolved itself into a rush of thousands of warriors, beating their shields, roaring like jaguars, screaming like eagles.
Not Cortés nor any of his men moved to meet them in the traditional manner. He merely shouted, “For Santiago!” and the bellow of the cannons made the Texcaltéca’s war noises sound like the creaking of crickets in a thunderstorm. All the warriors in the first onrushing rank tore apart in bits of bone and blobs of flesh and spatters of blood. The men in the following rank simply fell, but fell dead, and for no immediately apparent reason, since the harquebuses’ pellets and the crossbows’ short arrows disappeared inside their thick quilted armor. Then there was a different kind of thunder, as the horsemen came at full gallop out of the wood, the staghounds running with them. The white soldiers rode with their spears leveled, and they skewered their quarry in the way that chilis are strung on a string, and when their spears could collect no more bodies, the riders dropped the spears and unsheathed their steel swords and rode flailing them so that amputated hands and arms and even heads flew in the air. And the dogs lunged and ripped and tore, and cotton armor was no protection against their fangs. The Texcaltéca were understandably taken by surprise. Shocked, dismayed, and terrified, they lost their impetus and will to win; they scattered and milled about and wielded their inferior weapons desperately but to little use. Several times their knights and cuáchictin rallied and regrouped them and led them in renewed charges. But each time the cannons and harquebuses and crossbows had again been prepared, and they let loose their terrible shredding and piercing projectiles again and again into the Texcaltéca ranks, causing unspeakable devastation….
Well, I need not tell every detail of the one-sided battle; what happened that day is well known. In any case, I can describe it only from what was later told by the day’s survivors, though I myself eventually saw occasions of similar slaughter. The Texcaltéca fled from the field, pursued by Cortés’s native Totonáca warriors, who loudly and cowardly exulted in the opportunity to participate in a battle that required them only to harry the retreating warriors from behind. The Texcaltéca left perhaps one-third of their entire force lying on the field that day, and they had inflicted only trivial casualties on the enemy. One horse downed, I think, and a few Spaniards pricked by the first arrows, and some others more badly injured by fortunate strokes of maquáhuime, but none killed or put out of action for long. When the Texcaltéca had fled beyond range of pursuit, Cortés and his men made camp right there on the battlefield, to bind up their few wounds and to celebrate their victory.
Considering the awful losses it had suffered, it is to the credit of Texcála that the nation did not surrender itself to Cortés forthwith. But the Texcaltéca were a brave and proud and defiant people. Unfortunately, they had an unshakable faith in the infallibility of their seers and sorcerers. So it was to those wise men that the war chief Xicoténca resorted, in the very evening of that day of defeat, and asked of them:
“Are these outlanders really gods, as rumored? Are they truly invincible? Is there any way to overcome their flame-spouting weapons? Should I waste still more good men by fighting any longer?”
The seers, after deliberating by whatever magical means they employed, said this:
“No, they are not gods. They are men. But the evidence of their weapons’ discharging flame suggests that they have somehow learned to employ the hot power of the sun. As long as the sun shines, they have the superiority of their fire-spitting weapons. But when the sun goes down, so will their sun-given strength. By night, they will be only ordinary men, able to use only ordinary weapons. They will be as vulnerable as any other men, and as weary from the day’s exertions. If you would vanquish them, you must attack by night. Tonight. This very night. Or at sunrise, they will rise also, and they will sweep your army from the field as weeds are mowed.”
“Attack at night?” Xicoténca murmured. “It is against all custom. It violates all the traditions of fair combat. Except in siege situations, no armies have ever done battle by night.”
The sages nodded. “Exactly. The white outlanders will be off guard and not expecting any such assault. Do the unexpected.”
The Texcaltéca seers were as calamitously in error as seers everywhere so often are. For white armies in their own lands evidently do fight often by night among themselves, and are accustomed to taking precautions against any such surprises. Cortés had posted sentries at a distance all around his camp, men who stayed awake and alert while all their fellows slept in full battle garb and armor, with their weapons already charged and near to their hands. Even in the darkness, Cortés’s sentries easily descried the first advance Texcaltéca scouts creeping on their bellies across the open ground.
The guards raised no cry of alarm, but slipped back to camp and quietly woke Cortés and the rest of his army. No soldier stood up in profile against the sky; no man raised himself higher than a sitting or kneeling position; none made a noise. So Xicoténca’s scouts returned to report to him that the whole camp seemed to be defenselessly asleep and unaware, What remained of the Texcaltéca army moved in mass, on hands and knees, until they were right upon the camp’s perimeter. Then they rose up to leap upon the sleeping enemy, but they had no chance to give even a war cry. As soon as they were upright, and easy targets, the night exploded in lightning and thunder and the whistle of projectiles … and Xicoténca’s army was swept from the field as weeds are mowed.
The next morning, though his blind old eyes wept, Xicoténca the Elder sent an embassy of his highest nobles, carrying the square goldmesh flags of truce, to negotiate with Cortés the terms of Texcála’s surrender to him. Much to the envoys’ surprise, Cortés evinced none of the demeanor of a conqueror; he welcomed them with great warmth and apparent affection. Through his Malíntzin, he praised the valor of the Texcaltéca warriors. He regretted that their having mistaken his intentions had necessitated his having to defend himself. Because, he said, he did not want surrender from Texcála, and would not accept it. He had come to that country hoping only to befriend and help it.
r /> “I know,” he said, no doubt having been well informed by Malíntzin, “that you have for ages suffered the tyranny of Motecuzóma’s Mexíca. I have liberated the Totonáca and some other tribes from that bondage. Now I would free you from the constant threat of it. I ask only that your people join me in this holy and praiseworthy crusade, that you provide as many warriors as possible to augment my forces.”
“But,” said the bewildered nobles, “we heard that you demand of all peoples that they vow submission to your alien ruler and religion, that all our venerable gods be overthrown and new ones worshiped.”
Cortés made an airy gesture of dismissing all that. The Texcaltéca’s resistance had at least taught him to treat them with some shrewd circumspection.
“I ask alliance, not submission,” he said. “When these lands have all been purged of the Mexíca’s malign influence, we will be glad to expound to you the blessings of Christianity and the advantages of an accord with our King Carlos. Then you can judge for yourselves whether you wish to accept those benefits. But first things first. Ask your esteemed ruler if he will do us the honor of taking our hand in friendship and making common cause with us.”
Old Xicoténca had hardly heard that message from his nobles before we in Tenochtítlan had it from our mice. It was obvious to all of us gathered in the palace that Motecuzóma was shaken, he was appalled, he was enraged by the way his confident predictions had turned out, and he was agitated near to panic by the realization of what could come of his having been so irredeemably wrong. It was bad enough that the Texcaltéca had not stopped the white invaders for us, or even proved a hindrance to them. It was bad enough that Texcála was not laid open for our vanquishing. Worse, the outlanders were not at all discouraged or weakened; they were still coming, still uttering threats against us. Worst of all, the white men would now come reinforced by the strength and hatred of our oldest, fiercest, most unforgiving enemies.