There exists a certain small tree-dwelling animal that we call the huitzlaiuéchi, the “prickly little boar”—it is the puerco espin in Spanish—which is bristled all over with sharp spines instead of fur. No one knows why Mixcoatl, the god of hunters, created that particular animal, because its meat is distasteful to humans, and other predators sensibly stay clear of its unassailable coat of innumerable spikes. I menticm it only because I imagine our marching army must have resembled the prickly little boar, but an immensely large and long one. Each warrior carried on one shoulder his long spear and, on the other, his shorter javelin and its atlatl throwing-stick, so the entire column was as bristly as the animal. But ours was much more brilliant and gaudy, for the sunlight glinted from the obsidian points of those weapons, and the column also flaunted the severally colored flags and standards and guidons of its separate contingents—and my own flamboyant headdress at the front To any distant observer, we must indeed have looked impressive; I could only wish that there had been more of us.
Truth to tell, I was rather sleepy, after my night of frolicking with Améyatl, so, to keep myself awake by talking to somebody, I beckoned for Tícitl Ualíztli to move his horse forward and ride alongside me. He and I conversed on various topics, including the manner by which my cousin Yeyac had been slain.
“So the arcabuz kills by hurling a metal ball,” he said, reflectively. “What sort of wound does that inflict, Tenamáxtzin? A blow? A penetration?”
“Oh, a penetration, I assure you. Much like that made by an arrow, but more forcefully and deeply.”
The tícitl said, “I have known men to live, and even go on fighting, with an arrow in them. Or more than one arrow, providing that none has pierced a vital organ. And an arrow, of course, by its very nature, plugs its own puncture and stanches the bleeding to a considerable degree.”
“The lead ball does not,” I said. “Also, if an arrow-wounded man is quickly attended, a tícitl can pluck out the arrow in order to treat the injury. A ball would be almost impossible to extract.”
“Still,” said Ualíztli, “if that ball had not irreparably damaged some internal organ, the victim’s only real danger would be of bleeding to death.”
I said grimly, “I made sure of Yeyac’s doing just that. As soon as his belly was punctured, I turned him facedown—and kept him that way—so his life’s blood would the more quickly pour out.”
“Hmm,” said the tícitl, and rode in silence for a bit, then commented, “I wish I had been called, when you brought him to Aztlan, so I could have examined that wound. I daresay I shall have to attend many such in the days to come.”
Our column continued the three-day march always in formation, as I had commanded, for I wanted my warriors all compact in case we should meet an enemy force coming north from Compostela. But we encountered none, and never even espied any enemy soldiers scouting the route. So, during that time, I had no cause to try concealing or dispersing my men. And, when we camped each night, we made no attempt to hide the light of the fires over which we cooked our meals. Very good and nourishing and strengthening meals they were, too, of game killed along the way by warriors assigned to that duty.
But I had estimated that, by the fourth morning, we would be within sight of any sentinels Coronado might have posted around his town. At dawn of that day, I summoned my knights and cuéchictin to tell them:
“I expect us to be in charging distance of Compostela by nightfall. But I do not intend to make a charge from this direction, which the Spaniards would be most likely to anticipate. Nor do I intend to make our assault immediately. We will circle around the town and assemble again on the far southern side of it So, from here onward, your forces are to be divided in twain, one half to move well to the west of this main trail, the other half well to the east And each of those halves is to be divided even further—into separate, individual warriors, each making his way most cautiously and silently southward. All standards are to be furled, spears to be carried at the level, every man to take advantage of trees, underbrush, cactus, whatever other cover serves to make him as invisible as possible.”
I took off my own ostentatious headdress, folded it carefully ami tucked it behind my saddle.
“Without the flags, my lord,” said one knight, “how do we men afoot maintain contact with each other?”
I said, “I and these three other mounted men will continue openly, in full sight, along this trail. Atop these horses we will be guides conspicuous enough for the men to follow. And tell them this: The foremost among them is to stay at least a hundred paces behind me. Meanwhile, they need no contact with each other. The farther apart they are, the better. If one man comes upon a lurking Spanish scout, he is of course to kill that enemy, but quietly and unnoticeably. I want all of us to get close to Compostela without detection. However, if any of your men should encounter an enemy patrol or outpost that he cannot vanquish single-handed, then let him raise the war cry, and let the guidons be unfurled and let all your men—but only on that side of the trail—rally to that signal. The men on the other side are to go on silently and furtively, as before.”
“But, scattered as we will be,” said another knight, “is it not equally possible that Spaniards waiting in hiding can pick us off, one by one?”
“No,” I said flatly. “No white man will ever be able to move as noiselessly and invisibly as can we who were born to this land. And no Spanish soldier, encumbered with metal and leather, can even patiently sit still without making some inadvertent sound or movement.”
“The Uey-Tecútli speaks truly,” said G’nda Ké, who had elbowed her way into the group and, as usual, had to interpose a comment, however unnecessary. “G’nda Ké is acquainted with Spanish soldiers. Even a shuffling, stumbling cripple could steal upon them unawares.”
“Now,” I went on, “assuming that we are not interrupted by any hand-to-hand fighting or discovered by any uproar or impeded by any superior force, both halves of the troop are to keep going southward, guiding on me. When I judge that the time is right, I will turn my horse westward, toward where the sun will then be setting—because I would like to have Tonatíu’s favor shining upon me as long as possible. The warriors on that western side of the trail will continue to follow me—a hundred paces behind—and trust me to lead them safely around the outside of the town.”
“G’nda Ké will be right behind them,” she said complacently.
I threw her a glance of exasperation. “At the same time, the Cuachic Comitl will turn his horse eastward, and the men on that side of the trail are to follow him. Sometime late in the night, both halves of our fences should be south of the city. I will send messengers to make contact between the two and arrange for our reassembly. Am I understood?”
The officers all made the gesture of tlalqualízlii, then went to pass on my orders to their men. In a very little while, the warriors had almost magically—like the morning’s dew—vanished into the brush and trees, and the trail behind was empty. Only Ualíztli, Nochéztli, the Mexícatl Comitl and I still sat our mounts there in full view.
“Nochéztli,” I said, “you will take the point Ride on ahead, still at the walk. We three will not follow until you are out of sight. Keep going until you espy any sign of the enemy. Even if they have put out guards or barricades far to this side of the town and they see you before you can avoid them, they will not be expecting just one attacker. Also, they may well recognize you and be perplexed by your approach—especially since you come like a Spaniard, astride a horse. Their hesitation should give you chance enough to get away unharmed. Anyway, if and when you do sight the enemy—in force or otherwise—turn straight about and hurry back to me with the report.”
He asked, “And if I see nothing at all, my lord?”
“Should you be gone too long, and I decide the time has come for division of our men, I will loudly give the owl-hoot call. If you hear that—and are not dead or captured—race back to join us.”
“Yes, my lord. I am gone.”
And he was.
When he was no longer visible, the tícitl, Comitl and I put our own horses to the walk. The sun crossed the sky at about the same slow pace, and the three of us passed that long, anxious day in desultory conversation. It was late in the afternoon when at last we saw Nochéztli coming back toward us, and he was hardly hurrying—moving only at an easy trot, though I doubt that it felt very easy to his backside.
“What is this?” I demanded, as soon as he was within hearing. “Nothing whatever to report?”
“Ayya, yes, my lord, but most curious news. I rode all the way to the town’s outlying slave quarter, without ever being challenged. And there I found the defenses I long ago told you about—the gigantic thunder-tubes on wheels, and with soldiers all about them. But those thunder-tubes are still aimed inward, toward the town itself! And the soldiers gave me only a casual wave of greeting. So I made gestures to indicate that I had found this unsaddled horse wandering loose in the vicinity, and that I was trying to find its proper owner, and then I turned and came back this way—not in haste, for I had heard no owl hoot.”
The Cuéchic Comitl frowned and asked me, “What do you make of this, Tenamáxtzin? Is this man’s report to be believed? Remember, he was once in league with that enemy.”
Nochéztli protested, “I kiss the earth to the truth of it!” and made the tlalqualíztli—as well as he could, sitting atop a horse.
“I believe you,” I said to him, and then to Comitl, “Nochéztli has several times before now proved himself loyal to me. However, the situation is curious indeed. It is possible that the Arrow Knight Tapachíni and his men never came to warn Compostela at all. But it is just as possible that the Spaniards are laying some cunning trap. If so, we are still clear of it. Let us proceed as planned. I and Ualíztli will now turn westward. You and Nochéztli go east. The men afoot will separately follow us. We will circle wide around the town and meet again well south of it, sometime after dark.”
At this place on the trail, there was fairly thick forest to either side, and when the tícitl and I rode into it, we found ourselves in a gradually deepening twilight. I was hoping that the warriors a hundred paces behind us could still see us, and worrying that I might outdistance them when the dark really came down. But that worry was suddenly, shockingly driven from my mind—when I heard a loud and familiar noise from somewhere back of us.
“That was an arcabuz!” I gasped, and Ualíztli and I both reined our horses to a halt.
The words were scarcely spoken when there came a positive clamor of arcabuces being discharged—singly, severally, randomly, or a good number of them simultaneously—and all of them somewhere to our rear. But not far to our rear; the evening breeze brought me the acrid smell of their pólvora smoke.
“But how could we all have missed seeing—?” I started to say. Then I remembered something, and I realized what was happening. I remembered that Spanish soldier-fowler on the shore of Lake Texcóco, and how he discharged a whole battery of his arcabuces by yanking on a string.
These I was hearing now did not even have Spaniards holding them. They had been fastened to the ground or to trees, and a string tautly stretched from each of their gatillos through the underbrush. My horse and Ualíztli’s had not so far touched any string, but the warriors behind us were tripping against them, thus raking their own ranks with lethal flying lead balls.
“Do not move!” I said to the tícitl.
But he objected, “There will be wounded to attend!” and started to rein his horse around.
Well, it would eventually turn out that I had miscalculated regarding more things than just the ingenuity of the defenders of Compostela. But I had been right about one thing: The people of my own race could move as soundlessly as shadows and as invisibly as wind. The next moment, a terrific blow to my ribs knocked me clear off my saddle. As I thudded to the ground, I barely glimpsed a man in Aztéca armor, wielding a maquéhuitl, before he struck me again—using the wooden flat of the sword, not the obsidian edge—in the head, this time, and all the world around me went black.
When I came awake, I was seated on the ground, my back propped against a tree. My head was throbbing abominably and my vision was fogged. I blinked to clear it, and when I saw the man standing before me—leaning on his maquáhuitl, waiting patiently for me to regain consciousness—I involuntarily moaned:
“By all the gods! I have died and gone to Míctlan!” “Not yet, cousin,” said Yeyac. “But be assured that you will.”
XXI
WHEN I TRIED to move, I discovered that I was securely roped to the tree, and so was Ualíztli, beside me. Evidently he had not been so emphatically unhorsed, for he was well awake and cursing under his breath. Still dazed, slurring my words, I asked him:
“Tícitl, tell me. Is it possible that this man, once killed, could have come bade to life?”
“In this case, clearly, yes,” the physician said morosely. “The possibility had earlier occurred to me, when you told me that you had kept him lying facedown, so his blood would the more copiously drain out of him. What that in fact accomplished was to allow the blood to clot at the entry site of the wound. If no vital organs had been mangled, and if the seeming corpse was whisked away by his friends, quickly enough, any competent tícitl could have healed him. Believe me, Tenamáxtzin, it was not I who did it. But, yya ayya ouíya, you should have kept him face up.”
Yeyac, who had listened to this exchange with wry amusement, now said, “I was worried, cousin, that you might have caught one of those lead balls from the ambuscade that my good Spanish allies so craftily arranged. When one of my fyactin came to tell me that he had taken you alive, I was so very pleased that I knighted the man on the spot.”
As my addled wits began to clear somewhat, I growled, “You have no authority to knight anyone at all.”
“Have I not? Why, cousin, you even brought me the quetzal-feather headdress. I am again the Uey-Tecútli of Aztlan.”
“Then why would you want me alive, able to contest that gross assumption?”
“I am merely obliging my confederate, the Governor Coronado. It is he who wants you alive. For a short time, at least, so he can ask you certain questions. After that… well … he has promised you to me. I leave the rest to your imagination.”
Not being overeager to dwell on that, I asked, “How many of my men are dead?”
“I have no idea. I do not care. All those who survived certainly scattered in a hurry. They are no longer a fighting force. Now, apart and in the darkness, they are doubtless wandering far and wide—lost, unnerved, disconsolate—like the Weeping Woman Chicocíuatl and the other aimless ghosts of the night Come daylight, the Spanish soldiers should have little difficulty subduing them, one by one. Coronado will be pleased to have such strong men to slave in his silver mines. And, ayyo, here comes a squad to escort you to the governor’s palace.”
The soldiers loosed me from the tree, but kept my arms tightly bound as they led me out of the woods and down the trail to Compostela. Yeyac followed, with Ualíztli, and where they went I did not see. I was penned overnight in a cell room of the palace, unfed and unwatered but well guarded, and not brought before the governor until sometime the next morning.
Francisco Vásquez de Coronado was, as I had been told, a man no older than myself, and he was—for a white man—of goodly appearance, neatly bearded, even clean-looking. My guards untied me, but stayed in the room. And there was another soldier present, who, it became apparent, spoke Náhuatl and was to serve as interpreter.
Coronado addressed him at length—of course I understood every word—and the soldier repeated to me, in my native tongue:
“His Excellency says that you and another warrior were carrying thunder-sticks when you were captured and the other was killed. One of the weapons was obviously the property of the Royal Spanish Army. The other was obviously a handmade imitation. His Excellency wants to know who made that copy, and where, and how many have been made and how many are being made. Tell a
lso whence came the pólvora for them.”
I said, “Nino ixnéntla yanquic in tláui pocuíahuíme. Ayquic.”
“The indio says, Your Excellency, that he knows nothing about arcabuces. And never has.”
Coronado drew the sword sheathed at his waist, and said calmly, “Tell him that you will ask again. Each time he pleads ignorance, he will lose a finger. Ask him how many fingers he can spare before he gives a satisfactory answer.”
The interpreter repeated that in Náhuatl, and asked the same questions again.
I tried to look properly intimidated, and spoke haltingly, “Ce nechca…” but I was temporizing, of course. “One time… I was traveling in the Disputed Lands … and I came upon a guard post. The sentinel was fast asleep. I stole his thunder-stick. I have saved it ever since.”
The interpreter sneered. “Did that sleeping soldier teach you how to use it?”
Now I tried to look stupid. “No, he did not. He could not Because he was sleeping, you see. I know one squeezes the little thing called a gatillo. But I never had the chance. I was captured before—”
“Did that sleeping soldier also show you all the inner parts and workings of his thunder-stick, so that even you primitive savages could make a replica of it?”
I insisted, “Of that I know nothing. The replica you speak of—you must ask the warrior who carried it.”
The interpreter snapped, “You have already been told! That man was killed. Struck by one of the balls of the trip-string trap. But he must have thought he was facing actual soldiers. As he fell, he discharged his own thunder-stick at them. He knew well enough how to use one!”
What I had said, and what he had said, the interpreter again relayed in Spanish to the governor. I was thinking: Good man, Comitl, a true Mexícatl “old eagle” to the last. You are by now enjoying the bliss of Tonatíucan. But then I had to start thinking about my own predicament, for Coronado was glaring at me and saying: