She grabbed the sword off the ground, where the cannibal had dropped it, and sliced my ropes.
She gave me a look of contempt as I got up. “You are too stupid to live,” she said. “Now stay behind me.”
Stay behind a woman.
Coming from a man, it would have been an insult that could be answered only in blood.
But I was all out of manly pride.
She had created a forest fire that drove my captors away, saving me because she believed I was too stupid to take care of myself.
What could I say?
Maybe she was right about me.
Maybe I was too stupid to live.
68
“Women are treacherous,” I complained, back on the road with Sparrow. “Not only the High Priestess, but also the village girl who enticed me with food—then attempted to roast me for the evening meal.”
That a woman had saved me from that fate was a reality I angrily and irrationally ignored.
That she ignored my tantrum only heightened my rage at having to be saved by a woman half my size.
“Where is the tree stump?” I asked.
“Axe moves slow, but steadily. He will catch up with us,” she said, giving me a look of amused contempt. “I realized you would try to outpace us because he could not move so fast, so I set out alone.”
Daylight had broken. Behind us fire still raged, sending up black, billowing smoke, some of which I was still coughing up.
The moment we reached the road, we had fallen in with a line of porters carrying rubber from the land of the Rubber People near the Eastern Waters.
I was back into my beggar’s robe, my sword hidden beneath it. The cannibals had taken my sandals, and I would be barefooted until I could buy another pair at the next village.
“How did you find me?” I asked.
“It wasn’t difficult. When I was alone, I saw the innocent-looking young girl all by herself with the basket of fruit. When the man charged out of the bushes to grab her, I put an arrow through his heart. I then ‘persuaded’ the girl to tell me where they had taken you . . . before I sent her to Xibalba.”
“How did you know they would have taken me? Do the gods speak to you? Do you read minds?”
Shaking her head as if she still found me amusing, she tapped my chest where my heart would be.
A small tear and a stain that was difficult to see because the material was so dark, but when I looked where she tapped, I saw the bloodstained hole.
When she shot the man who charged out the bushes in the heart, he had been wearing my robe.
“Woman, you keep up your act of superiority, and I will beat you as if you were a disobedient wife.”
She gave me a long sideways look from the corners of her eyes. “I save your life—I can’t even count how many times—and how do you thank me? With threats of physical violence.”
“My gratitude is sincere,” I said truthfully. “You are an amazing woman. But you rescue me for your own ends, not mine—and I know your ends will harm, even kill me.”
We walked for a moment, and then I added, “You are right about me. I am not so wise to the ways of the world as you are. The people in my village wore only one face. Now I see people with many faces, some forced on them by circumstances. If you had not come along, I would have ended up as meat for villagers who were not unlike the ones with whom I spent most of my life.”
“These people do not eat the flesh of others except out of simple starvation—horrific as that may be,” she said.
“Our priests say that eating the heart of a strong enemy enhances one’s own strength.”
“Perhaps you should ask the man whose heart they rip out.”
I grabbed her arm and stopped, pulling her around to face me. “Why are you baiting me?”
She stared at me with derisive disdain.
“We can’t travel and work together unless we are honest and open with each other,” I said.
She looked away, as if she was struggling with my ultimatum. “I am Jeweled Skull’s daughter,” she finally said, meeting my eyes. “You are the son, whom he didn’t father but loved. A legendary storyteller, he was the keeper of the secret surrounding the Dark Rift Codex, but he did not share all of the secret with either of us.”
“You know more than I.”
“Only because when I was fourteen, my mother summoned me to the Temple of Love and trained me. I learned more about the Dark Rift from my mother and men who came to the temple than I did from my father. I don’t believe even Jeweled Skull knew where the Dark Rift was hidden. But I believe the Hermit knows.”
“How did Jeweled Skull die?”
“He was living in a coastal village. I am told he had waded into the water to cool himself and one of the Sea Gods’ beasts dragged him to his doom.”
“You weren’t there?”
“No, I was at the temple, but I hadn’t seen him for years.”
“You said I wasn’t the chosen. Who is?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. The chosen will be named by the Hermit. He is the chosen now. That I know from Jeweled Skull.”
“How were you permitted to become an archer? And your companion, Axe? Who is he?”
“I was raised by a friend of my father’s, a man who had once been War Lord of Mayapán. Axe had been one of his guards and was assigned to protect me. I convinced Axe to teach me how to shoot arrows.” As we walked, she asked, “Is that all your questions?”
“No. Do you know where Huemac the Hermit is?”
“No.”
“Lord Janaab told me that it shouldn’t be difficult to find out in Tenochtitlán, because the emperor visited him each year and that the emperor didn’t go anywhere unless there was a great procession.”
“He may be right. But even when we reach the land of the Aztecs, we must be careful. Those in Mayapán who desire the secret have a long reach.”
“Their reach must be shorter now,” I said, referring to what I imagined to be the massacre of much of the princess’ procession.
She gave me a look that told me I was once again being naïve.
“What is it?” I asked. “The king has sent more spies to follow me?”
“Not the king. His henchmen are probably dead or fled into the forests and then back to Mayapán to be painted red after the attack. Lord Janaab.”
“Lord Janaab works for the king,” I said.
“Lord Janaab works for the king—and for himself.”
I thought about that as we walked along. The great lord had competed with the War Lord for the king’s ear. Now the War Lord was gone. That meant Janaab had risen in power and prestige.
Risen in power and prestige as the king’s own power waned.
“Lord Janaab seeks the throne himself,” I said. “He wants the codex because he believes it will help him gain the kingdom.”
She nodded. “The king is unpopular because people believe the gods no longer listen to him. Janaab is no fool. If the king falls, he also will fall, and it’s likely that the king will lose his head and his throne soon.”
I shot a glance to our rear. “So you believe that Lord Janaab has also set out spies on our path.”
“He won’t be behind you, making it obvious that you have a shadow. I believe he is far ahead of us, sent by Janaab days before you left Mayapán. It’s not necessary to follow you—he knows where you are going. Once we reach Tenochtitlán, he will already be there.”
“Who is he?” I asked.
“Flint Shield, of course.”
I grappled with that for a moment. “Flint Shield may be after me, but certainly not for—”
I cut my reply short because I realized that once again I was not thinking the situation through. She knew something via her mother.
Or more likely through bed talk with Flint Shield himself.
“Flint Shield and Lord Janaab,” I said. “That is what you are saying.”
“A natural mating of snakes,” she said. “Flint Shield had lost
everything and was on the road to ruin.”
“And Lord Janaab needed someone who had nothing to lose and was not loyal to the king.”
I thought about the snake-kiss Lord Janaab had made me endure to torture information from me after I had saved his life.
“My master has set a rabid dog on my heels,” I told her.
69
That evening, Sparrow washed the smell of cannibals off me in a secluded pond. Afterwards, she came to me and, standing in the pond, her legs around me, we came together as one.
At the temple, titillation had fired our lovemaking. Now we came together again, but while the connection was still intense, it was more than just physical.
Now I knew for certain that I loved Sparrow, and despite her hard edge, I believed she loved me.
Later, as we sat in the grass, I admired her lithe body and told her I loved her.
“Tell me that you love me,” I begged.
She looked away a moment before answering. “I’ll tell you if we live to see the codex.”
70
Drawing close to the Valley of Mexico, we passed an endless caravan of goods and slaves escorted by a large contingent of Aztec warriors. Everyone on the road quickly made way for it.
At the head of the caravan was an Aztec prince, a nephew to the emperor Montezuma. He rode in an enormous litter carried by ten slaves.
His clothes were made of the finest cloth threaded with gold and silver, much of it exquisitely embroidered. His quetzal feathers were longer, taller, and brighter than those which the Mayapán king wore.
The prince personified all the strength and richness of the One-World’s most powerful kingdom.
Sparrow gave me a nudge as we hurried by the slowly moving procession. “Don’t gawk like a hick. They’ll paint us black. They have no respect for anyone but fellow Aztecs.”
She was referring to the fact that slaves were painted black with white stripes so they would be easy to spot.
When we left the chaos of the Mayan lands behind and passed through the Mixtec region, where the Aztecs kept order, we changed from beggars’ clothes to those of a merchant and his wife.
“The punishment for thievery in Aztec territories is so swift and harsh, the crime isn’t common,” she said, “nor is begging. They force roving beggars into slavery.”
We both kept up a disguise in a sense—dye covered my scars, and Sparrow obscured her pretty features with painted-on facial tattoos, which came off with hard scrubbing.
The caravan’s size and splendor dazzled me. “I’ve never seen a caravan this large, opulent, and so rich in goods and slaves,” I said to Sparrow. “And it’s protected by an army. It’s as if an entire kingdom were loaded onto the backs of porters, who were then ordered to move it somewhere else.”
All the porter caravans that I had ever seen carried the merchandise of a single merchant, whether it be pottery, religious icons, jewelry, salt, or a thousand other things.
Eyo! This caravan was a treasure trove of different things—bundles of bright feathers, sacks of cacao beans, woven cloth of many colors, animal skins, pottery, and reams of paper. However, the most valuable of all these trade goods we transported was mortal flesh. Overseers divided their cargo—often consisting of hundreds of slaves—into groups of a dozen each with collars around their necks attached to a long pole to keep them from running off.
I already knew from talk at camps along the way that the Aztecs had more slaves than any other kingdom because they needed them to work the gold and silver mines to the north as well as their fire mountains, from which they obtained their obsidian.
The healthiest of the slaves would be sent to work in the mines, the oldest and frailest to the holy temples’ sacrificial altars. The work was backbreaking, the conditions so lethal that the rate of attrition verged on 100 percent.
Consignment to the mines was a de facto death sentence.
Still, our lust for the precious metals was so strong that production was everything, safety conditions nothing. Hence, the demand for replacement slaves was continuous and unending.
“Their warriors are different from ours,” I told Sparrow as a company of soldiers marched by.
I had never seen common warriors dressed for battle as these Aztec soldiers were. Their quilted armor—which consisted of cotton quilting sewn over maguey or wood—equaled or surpassed that which our lesser nobles wore. Their spears, swords, daggers, clubs all had obsidian edges—thicker, better obsidian than the weapons of our own warriors, which were more often than not flint.
Commanders of the legion were easy to spot—dressed in uniforms mimicking jaguars.
“Those are the Jaguar Knights,” Sparrow said of them, “under the command of Montezuma himself. There is also an order of Eagle Knights. Only the finest warriors attain such a privileged and exalted status.”
“And the richest,” I said. “Each knight has only the finest, most expensive obsidian blades.”
“The Aztecs control the obsidian trade,” Sparrow said, “so warriors can more easily obtain it than in our land. Moreover, the Aztecs limit obsidian’s availability, so little of it ends up in the hands of the subservient cities, which pay them tribute.”
Control of obsidian explained a lot about their success as conquerors. The nation that controlled obsidian could fit its weapons with blades and points far superior to flint and wood.
“By hoarding obsidian, they limit their enemies to second-rate weapons,” I noted.
“And undercut their killing power.”
But more than weapons, the Aztecs possessed superior bearing. Arrogant contempt for all outsiders was manifest not only among the Aztec military but also in their merchants and overseers.
And nobody but nobody met their disdainful stares.
The price for insubordination was the slave-labor mines or the priest’s sacrificial knife.
“We have not yet entered Montezuma’s actual domain,” Sparrow said, “but you already see how even foreigners clear a path for the Aztecs.”
More impressive than the scurrying feet were the looks on the faces of those getting out of the way. I saw furtive, sideways glances of hate and fear on the faces of those who cowered before these Aztec interlopers.
“They grovel like dogs who fear the whip,” I said.
“And well they should,” Sparrow said, “even in their own territories. Those who do not humble themselves, the Aztecs punish hard. Aztecs will rape the wives and daughters of men who convey even a hint of disrespect . . . in front of those husbands and fathers. Afterwards, they hand the men over to the priests for sacrifice, then seize his property and enslave the man’s raped women. What the Aztecs don’t rape and steal, they destroy, pissing on it like dogs.”
She gestured back at the long caravan that our faster pace had left behind.
“The immensity of this caravan demonstrates how the Aztec emperor rules the northern half of the One-World. Every year, the emperor sends a list of goods that he wants delivered back to Tenochtitlán. A long list. In each conquered city, an Aztec ambassador gathers the treasure each year that the emperor demands.”
“What if the tribute isn’t paid?”
“Any city that fails to pay will quickly come to grief with Montezuma. They will learn that the gates of Xibalba have opened and Montezuma has unleashed all of hell’s hordes on them. The emperor has legions of Jaguar and Eagle Knights standing by in Tenochtitlán, which are ready to march against any city that balks at prostrating themselves to him. When they attack a recalcitrant city, it is without mercy. The city is plundered, all the nobles and rich are murdered, much of the population is forced into slavery.”
“Are we any different?” I asked. “If the king or Lord Janaab controlled the obsidian in our land, would they act differently from these Aztecs?”
“Yes, they are different from us. Our Mayan rulers are no less greedy or ambitious, but they are not destroyers of culture. When our Maya people were building temples that reached the s
tars, these now mighty Aztecs were naked barbarians who wrestled vultures for carrion. They had no knowledge of or respect for art or architecture, mathematics or science then, and they have none now.”
Sparrow said the Aztecs called themselves the Mexica, but others knew them as the Dog People.
“Angry gods drove them down from the north and into the Valley of Mexico. Those same deities then turned the area into an eternal desert of dust and wind. They came not as a proud nation of people, but as nomadic savages.”
Lord Janaab had already explained to me that before they reached the lush valley, the Aztecs came into contact with the great Tollan civilization and its capital at Tula. I already knew some of what she told me from Lord Janaab, but I listened to learn more.
“Tula was a golden civilization, a land of milk and honey to these savages. They had never seen anything like the city the god-king Quetzalcoatl had turned into the most magnificent city in the One-World.”
Tula became an obsession with them, something they desired in the same way men lust after women and riches. It took decades, but ultimately after the god-king left the city, they were able to overrun it.
They not only destroyed Tula itself but also stole its culture.
“They had no books or drawings, no great cities, temples, or palaces. Wearers of animal skins, not quetzal feathers, they were barbarians who could neither read nor write. So they took everything they could from Tula, even its gods and its legends, rewriting their own history so that they were a proud people rather than Dog People with dirt between their toes.”
Lord Janaab had told me what came next: They made up a fraudulent history, claiming they came from a paradise called Aztlán, which is why many today call them Aztecs.
When they entered the Valley of Mexico, at first they were hired as mercenaries by the existing kingdoms because they soldiered well in war, but their manners were so brutish, their hearts so murderous and thieving, their neighbors warred against them, forcing the Aztec savages to seek refuge on two swampy islets on Lake Texcoco.