“Please, Your Excellency! The guards must not take the risk of—”
“I know it, you imbecile! Shut your mouth! And strangle that howling bitch!”
I was slowly backing toward the door, seemingly dragging the helpless black man, and Ualíztli was right with us. Esteban was turning his head from side to side, as if looking for help, his eyes fearfully bulging so that they showed white all around. The movement of his head was deliberate, to cause my blade to cut his throat skin slightly, so that everyone could see a trickle of blood run down his neck.
“Ground your arms, men!” Coronado commanded the soldiers, who were alternately gaping at him and at our slow, wary progress. “Stand as you are. No firing, no swordplay. I had rather lose both the prisoners than that single miserable Moro.”
I called to him, “Tell one of them, señor, to run outside before us, and loudly to inform every soldier in the vicinity. We are not to be molested or impeded. When we are safely gone beyond the town, I will release your precious Moro unharmed. You do have my word on that.”
“Yes,” said Coronado, through gritted teeth. He motioned to a soldier near the door. “Go, Sargento. Do as he says.”
Circling well clear of us, the soldier scuttled out the door. Ualíztli and I and the limp, goggle-eyed Esteban were not far behind. No one pursued us as we followed that soldier along a short hall I had not been in before, and down a flight of stairs, and out through the palace’s street door. The soldier was already shouting as we three emerged. And there, at a hitching rack, as Esteban had arranged, a saddled horse was waiting for us.
I said, “Tícitl Ualíztli, you will have to run alongside. I am sorry, but I had not counted on your company. I will hold the horse to a walk.”
“No, by Huitztli, go at a gallop!” the physician exclaimed. “Old and stout though I am, I am eager enough to be out of here that I will move like the wind!”
“In the name of God,” growled Esteban, under his breath. “Cease your gibbering and move! Fling me across the saddle and leap up behind and go”
As I heaved him atop the horse—actually, he bounded and I only seemed to impel him—our herald-soldier was crying commands to everyone within hearing, “Make way! Safe passage!” All the other people in the street, soldiers and citizens alike, were gawking numbly at this remarkable spectacle. Not until I was seated behind the saddle’s cantle, now holding Esteban’s knife ostentatiously pointed at his kidneys, did I realize that I had neglected to unhitch the horse from the rail. So Ualíztli had to do that, and handed the reins up to me. Then, true to his word, the tícitl waddled off at a speed commendable in one of his age and girth, enabling me to put the horse to a trot beside him.
When we were out of sight of the palace, and out of hearing of that soldier’s shouts, Esteban—though being jounced while hanging uncomfortably head down—began giving me directions. Turn right at the next street, left at the next and so on, until we were beyond the city’s center and out in one of the mean quarters where the slaves lived. Not many of those were about—most were doing slave work somewhere at this hour—and the few we saw took care to avert their eyes. They probably supposed us—two indios and a Moro—to be slaves also, employing a truly unique mode of escape, and wanted to be able to say, should they be questioned, that they had seen nothing of us.
When we reached Compostela’s outskirts, where even the slave shacks were few and far apart and no one at all was in sight, Esteban said, “Stop here.” He and I clambered down from the horse and the tícitl collapsed full length on the ground, panting and sweating. While Esteban and I rubbed the sore places on our bodies—he his stomach and I my rump—he said:
“This is as far as I can play hostage to your safety, Juan Britdnico. There will be Spanish outposts beyond, and they will not have got the word to let us pass. So you and your companion will somehow have to make your own way, on foot, and stealthily. I can only wish you good fortune.”
“Which we have had thus far, thanks to you, amigo. I trust that fortune will not desert us now, when we are so near to freedom.”
“Coronado will not order a pursuit until he has me back in one piece. As I told you, and as events have proved, the ambitious governor and the avaricious friar dare not endanger my black hide. So—“He climbed stiffly back onto the saddle, right side up this time. “Hand me the knife.” I did, and he used it to rip his clothes in several places, and even to nick his skin here and there, just enough to draw blood, then gave the knife back to me.
“Now,” he said, “use the reins to tie my hands tight to the saddle pommel here. To give you as much of a running start as I can, I will plod only slowly back to the palace. I can plead weakness from having been cruelly cut and beaten by you savages. Be glad that I am black; no one will notice that I am not bruised all over. More than that I cannot do for you, Juan Británico. As soon as I get to the palace, Coronado will fan out his whole army to look for you, turning over every least pebble. You must be far, far from here by then.”
“We will be,” I said. “Either safely deep in our native forests or securely deep in that dark place you Christians call hell. We thank you for your kind help, for your bold imagination and for your putting yourself at hazard on our behalf. Go you, amigo Esteban, and I wish you joy in your own freedom soon to be realized.”
XXII
“WHAT DO WE do now, Tenamáxtzin?” asked Ualíztli, who had recovered his breath and was sitting up.
“As the Moro said, there has not been time for the governor to have sent word to his guard posts, to let us—if we still held our hostage—pass unhindered. Therefore, neither will they have been alerted to expect us at all. They will, as usual, be looking outward, for enemies trying to enter the town, not leave it. Just follow me, and do as I do.”
We walked upright until we were past the last shanties of the slave quarter, then we stooped over and went very, very cautiously farther out from the town until I espied, at a distance, a shack with soldiers around it, none of them looking our way. We went no nearer to that, but turned left and kept on until we saw another such shack and soldiers, these standing around one of those thunder-tubes, the kind called a culebrina. So we turned back and retraced our path until we were about midway between those guard posts. Happily for us, at that spot a dense underbrush stretched away toward a tree line on the horizon. Still stooping, duck-walking, I led the way into those bushes, staying below the tops of them, trying not to shake any of them, and the tícitl—though again panting heavily—did likewise. It seemed to me that we had to endure that awkward, cramped, excruciating, slow progress for countless one-long-runs—and I know it was far more fatiguing and painful for Ualíztli—but we did, at long last, reach the line of trees. Once within them, I gratefully stretched erect—all my joints creaking—and the tícitl again sprawled full length on the ground, groaning.
I lay down nearby and we both rested for a luxurious while. When Ualíztli had regained breath enough to speak, but not yet strength enough to stand, he said:
“Would you tell me, Tenamáxtzin, why did the white men let us leave? Surely not just because we took with us one of their black slaves. A slave of any color is as expendable as spittle.”
“They believe that particular slave holds the secret to a fabulous treasure. They are foolish to think so—but I will explain all that another time. Right now, I am trying to think of some way to find the Cüachic Nochéztli and the rest of our army.”
Ualíztli sat up and gave me a worried look. “You must be still unsettled of mind, from that blow to your head. If all our men were not slain by the thunder-sticks, they are bound to have scattered and fled far from this place by now.”
“They were not and they did not. And I am not deranged. Please stop talking physician’s talk, and let me think.” I glanced upward; Tonatíu was already slipping down the sky. “We are again north of Compostela, so we cannot be too far from where we were ambushed. Would Nochéztli have kept the warriors assembled hereabouts? Or led them south
of the town, as originally intended? Or even started them back to Aztlan? What would he have done, not knowing what had become of me?”
The tícitl considerately refrained from comment
“We cannot simply go wandering about in search of them,” I went on. “Nochéztli must find us. I can think of nothing but to make a signal of some sort, and hope it attracts him hither.”
The tícitl could not keep silent for long. “Best hope it does not attract the Spanish patrols that are certain to be looking for us very soon.”
“It would be the last thing they would expect,” I said. “That we would deliberately call attention to our hiding place. But if our own men are anywhere about, they must be near frenzied for some news of their leader. Anything out of the ordinary ought to draw at least a scout. A big fire should do it. Thanks be to the earth goddess Coatlicue, there are many pines among these trees, and the ground is thick with dry needles.”
“Now call on the god Tlaloc to strike the needles alight with a fork of his lightning,” Ualíztli said wryly. “I see no usable embers glowing anywhere here. I had combustible liquids in my physician’s sack that could be easily ignited, but that sack was taken from me. It will take us all night to find and fashion and use a drill and block.”
“No need for that, nor for Tlaloc,” I said. “Tonatíu will help us before he sets.” I felt around inside the quilted armor I still wore. “My weapons were taken, too, but the Spaniards evidently did not think this worth confiscating.” I brought out the lente, the crystal given me so long ago by Alonso de Molina.
“Neither would I think it worth anything,” said Ualíztli. “What earthly use is a little blob of quartz?”
I said only, “Watch,” and got up and moved to where a stray sunbeam came down through the trees to the ground’s litter of brown needles. Ualíztli’s eyes widened when, after only a moment, a wisp of smoke rose from there, then a flicker of flame. A moment more, and I had to jump back away from what was becoming a very respectable blaze indeed.
“How did you do that?” the tícitl asked, marveling. “Where did you get such a sorcerous thing?”
“A gift from father to son,” I said, smiling in reminiscence. “Blessed with the help of Tonatíu and of a father in Tonatíucan, I believe I can do just about anything. Except sing, I suppose.”
“What?”
“The guard of my cell at the palace disparaged my singing voice.”
Ualíztli again gave me the probing look of a physician. “Are you sure, my lord, that you are not still affected by that blow to your head?”
I laughed at him, and turned to admire my fire. As it spread among the ground needles, it was not very visible, but now it was igniting the resin-full green needles of the pines above, and so was sending up a plume of smoke that rapidly got higher, denser and darker.
“That should fetch somebody,” I said with satisfaction.
“I suggest that we move back among the bushes we came through,” said the tícitl. “We can perhaps get an early warning glimpse of who comes. And whoever it is will not find us just a pair of roasted cadavers.”
We did that, and crouched out there, and watched the fire eat through the grove, sending up a smoke to rival that which always hangs above the great volcano Popocatepetl outside Tenochtítlan. Time passed, and the lowering sun turned the high smoke cloud a ruddy gold in color, an even more conspicuous signal against the sky’s deepening blue. More time passed, before finally we heard a rustling in the bushes around us. We had not been talking, but when Ualíztli gave me a questioning look, I held a cautionary finger to my lips, then raised slowly up to see over the bushes’ tops.
Well, they were not Spaniards, but I could almost have wished they were. The men surrounding our hiding place were armor-clad Aztéca, prominent among them the Arrow Knight Tapachíni—these were Yeyac’s warriors. One of them, cursedly keen-eyed, saw me before I could crouch down again, and gave the owl-hoot cry. The circle of them closed in upon us, and Ualíztli and I resignedly stood erect The warriors stopped at a distance from us, but ringed us completely about, so that we were the center and aim of all their leveled spears and javelins.
Yeyac himself now elbowed through the circle and came closer to us. He was not alone; G’nda Ké came with him; both were smirking triumphantly.
“So, cousin, we are face-to-face again,” he said. “But this will be the last time. Coronado may have been reluctant to raise the alarm at your escape, but the good G’nda Ké was not She ran immediately to tell me. Then I and my men had only to wait and watch. Now, cousin, let us escort you well away from here, before the Spaniards do come. I want privacy and ample leisure in which to do the slow slaying of you.”
He motioned for the warriors to close in upon us. But before they could converge, a single one of them stepped forward from the circle, the only warrior bearing an arcabuz.
“I killed you once before, Yeyac,” said Tiptoe, “when you menaced my Tenamáxtli. As you say, this will be the last time.”
The other warriors on either side of her recoiled as the thunder-stick thundered. The lead ball took Yeyac in his left temple and for an instant, his head blurred in a spray of red blood and pink-gray brain substance. Then he toppled, and no back-alley tícitl would be able to revive him ever again.
Every other one of us stood frozen, stunned, for the space of several heartbeats. Obviously, in her bulky quilted armor, Pakápeti—even with something of a belly now—had been able, all this while, to pass as a man of the company, and to keep her arcabuz concealed somewhere until it was really needed.
Now she had just time enough to send me a brief, affectionate, sad smile. Then there was a bellow of outrage from all of Yeyac’s men, and those nearest Tiptoe surged to get at her, and the first one who did gave a mighty overhand slash of his obsidian sword. It opened Tiptoe’s armor, her skin, her body, from breastbone to groin. Before she fell, there spilled out of her a great gush of blood, all her organs and guts… and something else. The men about her reeled back away from her, staring aghast and uttering exclamations loud enough to be heard above the noise of all the other angry shouts—“tequáni!” and “tzipitl!” and “palanquí!”—meaning “monstrosity” and “deformity” and “putridity.”
In that tumult, none of us had paid heed to other rustlings in the brush roundabout, but now we heard a wild, concerted war cry combining eagle shrieks, jaguar grunts, owl hoots and parrot ululations. There came crashing through the bushes innumerable men of my own army, and they flung themselves upon Yeyac’s warriors, hacking and thrusting with maquáhuime and spears and javelins. Before joining the affray myself, I pointed to what was left of Pakápeti and commanded Ualíztli, “See to her, tícitl!”
It was a battle fought by profile shapes, not full-rounded figures, just the outlines of us warriors, black against the sheet of fire still consuming the grove. So every man soon dropped his heavier weapons, lest he find himself stabbing or slicing one of his own comrades. All resorted to knives—most of them obsidian; a few, like mine, of steel—and fought hand to hand, sometimes the opponents grappling on the ground. I personally slew the Arrow Knight Tapachíni. And the battle was a short one, because my men far outnumbered Yeyac’s. As the last of those fell, the great blaze also began to the down, as if its accompaniment was no longer required, and we all found ourselves in the near darkness of early night.
Doubtless through god-arranged coincidence, I found myself standing next to the perfidious G’nda Ké, still alive and entire, evidently spared from the slaughter only because she wore woman’s garb.
“I should have known,” I said, panting. “Even in furious battle, you remain unscathed. I am glad. As your friend Yeyac said just now, I shall have privacy and leisure in which to slay you slowly.”
“How you talk!” she chided me, with maddening composure. “G’nda Ké lured Yeyac and his men into this trap, and what thanks does she get?”
“You lying bitch!” I snarled, then told two warriors nearby, “Tak
e this female and hold her tight between you and march her with us when we leave here. If she disappears, so will you two, and in fragments.”
Next moment, I was being tightly embraced by the Cuéchic Nochéztli, as he exclaimed, “I knew the white men could not long hold captive so valiant a warrior as my lord Tenamáxtzin!”
“And you have proved a more than capable substitute in the meantime,” I said. “As of tonight, you are my second in command, and I will see that our Order of Eagle Knights bestows on you its accolade. You have my congratulations, my gratitude and my esteem, Knight Nochéztli.”
“You are most gracious, my lord, and I am most honored. But now—let us make haste away from this place. If the Spaniards are not already on their way, their thunder-tubes could fling their missiles as far as here.”
“Yes. When our men have retrieved all their weapons, rally them and start a withdrawal northward. I will catch up to you as soon as I have attended to one final matter.”
I sought among the throng until I found Ualíztli, and asked him:
“What of that dear, brave girl, Pakápeti? She saved both our lives, tícitl. Was there anything you could do for her at the last?”
“Nothing. She was dead and at peace before she hit the ground.”
“But that other—whatever caused her assailants such horror. What was—?”
“Hush, my lord. Do not ask. You would not wish to know. I wish I did not.” He gestured toward where the trees had been, now only charred poles amid a bed of smoldering embers. “I gave over everything into the hands of the kindly hearth goddess Chéntico. Fire cleanses the earth of even unearthly things.”
Nochéztli had recovered from the site of the Spaniards’ ambush, besides the numerous arcabuces, the slain warrior Comitl’s horse. So he and I were both mounted as we led our men off into the night—though I soon wished fervently that I had a saddle between me and the horse.
I again praised the new knight for having shown so much initiative during my absence, but added, “To make any use of those weapons you acquired for us, we must mix the powder for them and somehow find a source of lead.”