Malinal had to admit she could find no fault in Muluc’s reasoning and was not surprised, in the face of his insistent bullying, when the paramount chief eventually gave way. Being too old to go into battle, Ah Kinchil seemed almost grateful to pass command to the younger man and agreed to travel with the rearguard as an observer only.
Before he hurried from the audience chamber to lead the army of the Chontal Maya north in a great mass towards the fields of Potonchan, Muluc turned on Malinal. ‘Remember that Mexica trader I told you about,’ he said, ‘the one I’m going to sell you to?’ He smirked as he saw her face drop. ‘Well, you’re about to meet him.’
Malinal thought she had never seen her stepfather look so pleased with himself.
Having returned to the passage they’d cut through the bush, Alvarado led his men onto the track he’d followed in yesterday’s flanking manoeuvre. It continued through forest for about another mile, and then a further mile through open fields to a point about three miles south of Potonchan, near a range of low hills, where it intersected with the great highway that Davila’s squad were reconnoitring today. He had it in mind to cross the highway and head west towards the coast and the manglar swamps to see if there was any sign of the enemy there but, soon after emerging into open fields again, with the long white strip of the highway in sight, he began to hear musket shots. The sounds were coming from somewhere further to the south, beyond the hills, and reached him faintly at first because of an adverse north wind. Still, there was no doubt in his mind. That smug bastard Davila, who’d rescued him yesterday, had run into trouble with the Indians.
Alvarado ordered his squad to turn south across the fields. Proceeding through the maize at a forced march, and skirting the hills, he soon had a better idea of Davila’s predicament. Half a mile ahead, somewhat to the east of the road, stood a large building completely surrounded by a great horde of the enemy. The crash of musket fire was unmistakable now, so too the mad discord of drums and pipes with which the Maya liked to accompany every attack, and snatches of wild yells reached him between gusts of wind.
‘Keep low, men,’ Alvarado ordered. ‘Let’s see how close we can get without being seen.’
It was uncomfortable bending over almost double, carrying weapons and running through the maize, but well worth the effort. The enemy, and there were thousands of them, had their backs turned and were so intent on the waves of assaults they continued to throw against the well-defended building that they remained for a long while perfectly oblivious of the squad’s fast, stealthy advance.
Alvarado raised his arm and brought his men to a halt less than five hundred paces from the outer ranks of the enemy encirclement. A small force of Spaniards still held the roof of the beleaguered building, shooting down on the attackers at point-blank range, pushing them back with pike thrusts, and seemingly as unaware as the Indians themselves of Alvarado’s approach.
Keeping his voice low, he called his twenty musketeers and twenty crossbowmen forward and ordered them to spread out into a single skirmish line with the rest of the square formed up behind them. ‘Pick your targets,’ he said, ‘and at a hundred paces, sooner if they spot us, put a volley into their backs, all the muskets and all the crossbows together, then countermarch at the double back into the square and draw your swords.’
‘What about reloading, sir?’ one of the shooters asked.
‘We’re going to cut our way through and join Davila’s men. You can reload at your leisure once we’re inside that barn they’re defending.’
Alvarado drew his rapier and slashed its blade satisfyingly through the air. He rather wished he’d brought the falchion after all. This Nuñez steel was too good for riffraff like the Maya.
The Indians were getting better at timing their charges in the intervals between musket and crossbow volleys, Díaz realised. He was defending a gap in the masonry on the south side and this was now the sixth or seventh wave of attackers who had hurled themselves furiously against weak points all around the structure and repeatedly tried to scale the walls whence they were thrown back by the shooters and pikemen on the roof. Again came the hideous shrieks and yells of the attackers; again strong hands scrabbled at the crumbling blocks, tearing down the wall stone by stone; again snarling painted faces loomed up through the breach, their rank breath reaching Díaz. He gave a hard thrust with his sword, saw it smash a man’s front teeth in a burst of blood, felt it slip through the void of his mouth and catch as it severed his spine. Another suicidal warrior was already climbing over the back of the first, offering his face to the blade, and Díaz withdrew and stabbed again.
A great weariness began to overmaster him. From the position of the sun he guessed the time at around eleven in the morning, which would mean they’d been marching and running and fighting for only four hours.
Four hours! It felt more like four days!
Yet how much longer could they hold out before the sheer numbers of the enemy overwhelmed them?
Already a new charge was coming in but, as the Indians ran screaming towards the walls, Díaz heard excited shouts from the roof and the sweet sound of muskets roaring, not from within the beleaguered structure, but from somewhere to the northeast outside the encircling ranks of the attackers.
‘Thank God,’ he breathed as he killed another man. ‘We are saved.’
From a hundred paces the twenty musket rounds and twenty crossbow bolts tore into the backs of the surprised Indians with devastating force and a huge gap opened in the circling mass. The shooters retired within the square and Alvarado led the charge with his personal squad of practised swordsmen thirsting for blood right behind him in the front ranks.
The Indians milled in dazed panic as the armoured square hit them at a run, Toledo blades carving limbs and heads from bodies with no more difficulty than slicing bread. In moments a hundred – two hundred! – of the enemy were down, stone dead or writhing on the ground, trampled underfoot by the advancing squad and stabbed by the pikemen as the Spaniards found themselves traversing the circle of clear space encompassing the building.
‘This way, this way!’ Alvarado heard men shout as grinning faces peered through gaps in the masonry and the defenders on the roof beckoned his men round to the west side of the redoubt. Groups of Indians who’d been assaulting the walls tangled with them and were mercilessly despatched, then they rounded the northwest corner, climbed heaps of the enemy slain by the defenders and poured in through the ragged breach in the west wall where once a door must have stood.
‘Ho there, Davila!’ said Alvarado to the exhausted, blood-smeared captain who came forward to greet him. ‘I see you’ve got yourself in a bit of a tight spot here. Just as well my men and I happened along to get you out of it.’
‘Touché,’ admitted Davila with a weary smile. To Alvarado’s surprise the other captain then stepped forward and embraced him warmly.
Bernal Díaz stood at the doorway poised for the breakout with Mibiercas and La Serna by his side. ‘Funny how things turn around,’ said La Serna. ‘One minute you’re looking death in the face, the next a long life beckons.’
‘We’re not home and dry yet,’ observed Mibiercas softly as he ran a whetstone down the edge of his blade. The long diagonal cut on his cheek was still dripping blood.
‘I fancy our chances though,’ said La Serna. ‘That Alvarado’s a tough one. What do you reckon, Bernal?’
‘We’ll make it,’ Díaz grunted. He had the shakes, something that didn’t usually afflict him no matter how tough the fight.
‘You OK?’ La Serna asked him, concerned.
‘Not so good,’ Díaz gestured to his thigh which was now so swollen he’d had to cut the seam on his breeches.
‘That arrow you took yesterday?’
‘Yes. Didn’t think much of it at the time.’ Díaz shivered again. ‘Some kind of fever setting in.’
‘Bad day for it,’ said La Serna. He was just stating facts.
‘I’ll get through.’
Half of Davila’s squad were injured, but all – except maybe me, Díaz thought – were fit enough to march. Even those stunned by the pestilential slingstones had regained their senses, and none, thanks be to God, were dead. For their part, Alvarado’s men were fresh and in high spirits. Better still, a quick inventory had found that the musketeers and archers in his squad had sufficient powder, ball and bolts to replenish the near-exhausted stocks of Davila’s shooters.
So La Serna was right, Díaz thought. Whereas a fighting retreat drawn out over the four miles to Potonchan had been out of the question just moments before, it was now, thanks to Alvarado’s timely intervention, a viable option. Indeed it was not too much to hope that the combined strength of both squads, with forty archers and forty musketeers amongst them, would be sufficient to drive off the few thousand Indians surrounding them.
Water skins were passed around, powder and ammunition were shared and checked one last time, a few men muttered prayers and then, with a great roar, the two hundred Spaniards burst forth from the stone shelter and set out at a jog across the fields.
Every jolt was agony for Díaz, but he’d withstood far worse than this in his soldiering career. As the hail of Indian missiles began to pour down again he kept his buckler above his head, set his teeth and ran on.
Pepillo had fallen off Molinero four times, and was bruised from head to foot, but he thought at last he was beginning to get the hang of it. ‘We’ll make a rider of you yet,’ Melchior said with a grin.
They hadn’t seen Cortés since dawn but around noon a messenger came from him with orders that Molinero was to be barded at once. The caudillo expected to have need of him within the hour. All across the orchard, similar instructions were being delivered to the other grooms.
‘What’s “barded”?’ asked Pepillo.
‘It means armoured,’ said Melchior. ‘Barding is armour for horses – plate and mail and boiled leather; it protects them from arrows and spear thrusts and sword cuts and such … It’s the barding that was in those sea chests we offloaded last night. Come on, you can help me.’
They led Molinero over to the south side of the orchard, directly behind the palace, where all the chests brought from the ship were lined up. Melchior went directly to one of these. ‘This belongs to Cortés,’ he explained, adding proudly, ‘he stores his personal armour in here as well. It’s my job to keep it and Molinero’s barding polished and free of rust.’ With a flourish he sprung the chest’s catch and opened the heavy lid. The sun, directly overhead now, shone down on the dazzling contents of gleaming steel.
‘We’ll start with the champron,’ Melchior said. ‘That’s what protects Molinero’s head and eyes – though he doesn’t like it much, do you, boy?’ He stroked the stallion’s quivering neck then reached into the sea chest and pulled out a fearsome-looking steel mask.
‘It’s a sort of helm, but for horses,’ Pepillo said.
‘That’s right.’ Muttering soothing words, and with many gentle clicks of his tongue, Melchior strapped the champron over Molinero’s head. It ran from his ears to his muzzle, with hinged extensions covering the jowls. There were holes, protected by flanges, for his eyes, and a great spike, like a unicorn’s horn, now projected from the centre of his forehead.
Melchior returned to the chest and extracted a set of segmented steel plates. ‘These are called the crinet,’ he said to Pepillo. ‘Go to the other side. We’re going to put them over Molinero’s neck.’ Once in place and fixed by straps to the champron, Pepillo saw how the plates of the crinet would protect the stallion’s neck and throat – not completely, because there were gaps between them to make the armour flexible and allow him to move his head freely, but enough to ward off most attacks.
Melchior was pulling out more large sheets of plate armour. ‘Now the peytral. It’s heavy – you’ll have to help me again; there, take that side – but Molinero’s so strong he hardly notices the weight.’ Working together they buckled the peytral, which was designed to protect Molinero’s chest and extended back almost as far as the saddle, to straps hanging down from the crinet.
The last and largest piece of armour, a cunning combination of steel and leather, was called the croupiere and protected the hindquarters of the great war horse. ‘There you are, boy,’ Melchior said when he was done, standing back to examine the stallion. ‘Now you look fearsome!’
As though he understood the words, Molinero responded with a whinny, blew air from his nostrils and pawed the ground.
He did look fearsome, Pepillo thought.
Gazing up at the huge animal decked out in his gleaming armour and ready to charge into battle, he could hardly imagine that he had ever sat upon his back.
The trader, Malinal immediately saw from his clothing, belonged to that elite stratum of Mexica society, ranked just below the nobility, known as the Pochteca. As well as being the principal traffickers in exotic slaves, these Pochteca merchants dealt in chocolate, jaguar pelts, quetzal plumes, metals and other luxury items from the most far-flung tributaries of the empire, and from more distant lands like the Yucatán that were not subject to the Great Speaker’s rule. Such long-distance commerce, over much of which they exercised a strict monopoly, had made the Pochteca extremely rich, though they were forbidden to flaunt their wealth in Tenochtitlan or other cities of the empire except within the confines of their secretive guildhalls. They travelled in large caravans with hundreds of servants and bearers, well protected from marauders and outlaw bands by detachments of seasoned Mexica warriors, and were themselves frequently highly skilled in the martial arts. Many, in addition, cultivated connections with foreign rulers and served Moctezuma covertly as spies and intelligence-gatherers.
Many, thought Malinal, such as this one, Cuetzpalli by name, to whom Muluc planned to sell her on the morrow and who would take her back to Tenochtitlan – just as she had been taken there five years previously by another visiting Pochteca. This afternoon, however, Cuetzpalli was evidently in the mood for a spectacle, not business, having been invited by Ah Kinchil to witness the destruction of the white men by his great army of forty thousand warriors. Like so many Maya chiefs, Ah Kinchil was in awe of the power of the Mexica and would go to great lengths to please and impress their representatives in the hope he would never be obliged to pay tribute to them. While no doubt providing some grand entertainment to the influential Pochteca, therefore, the looming battle was clearly also being taken as an opportunity to demonstrate to him – and thus to Moctezuma whose spy he most certainly was – the full extent of Mayan military readiness.
Cuetzpalli meant ‘lizard’ in the Nahuatl language and, with his hooded gaze, long perfumed hair and slithery manner, this merchant was, Malinal decided, aptly named. She did not know him, since her services in Tenochtitlan had been reserved exclusively for the higher nobility, but he was much younger than those few in the guilds with whom she had come into contact, being no more than twenty-seven or twenty-eight years of age. No doubt, since membership of the Pochteca was hereditary, he had inherited the position from his father. He had a long, narrow face, prominent nose, high cheekbones, good teeth and a strong jaw and would have been the very image of classic Mexica comeliness were it not for the furtive, sliding-away quality of his gaze, which had never quite met her own since Ah Kinchil had required her to serve as his interpreter on this seven-mile jaunt down to Potonchan.
Both men were being carried shoulder-high in comfortable, cushioned litters and had their bodyguards – a dozen Mexica Cuahchics in the case of Cuetzpalli – arrayed around them. Malinal walked between the litters, translating the occasional formal pleasantries and observations of the wizened old chief and the smooth young merchant, but with her mind hardly on the task. What preoccupied her instead was the coming confrontation with the white men and her hope, still in part touched by Tozi’s prophetic zeal, that something extraordinary was about to take place. She could sense Ah Kinchil’s nervousness and uncertainty even while he boasted to Cuetzpalli of the ferocity of h
is warriors who marched just a mile ahead in five regiments of eight thousand men each. Their forty thousand pairs of feet had stirred up a dust cloud so vast it seemed to stretch from horizon to horizon. Despite the Xaman hills, which lay in the way, this immense cloud must surely be visible from Potonchan, now barely five miles from the advance units.
In her imagination Malinal’s mind soared up over the hills and flew to the side of the leader of the white men. She felt sure, after everything she had heard Cit Bolon Tun say the night before, that he must indeed be a man, like any other man …
And yet … and yet …
The lookouts had called Cortés to the top of the pyramid around noon when Alvarado and Davila’s squads, united in a single large square, had emerged from behind the cover of the hills three miles south of Potonchan and proceeded at a forced march towards the town, harried by a large mob of enemy skirmishers. Although Cortés could not understand why the two squads were now together when they’d set out on separate missions, they did not seem to be in any danger of being overrun and were proceeding in good order. He’d sent out a hundred men to reinforce them anyway, but the Indians had immediately disengaged at the sight of the new force and fled back towards the hills. In the past half-hour Alvarado and Davila had crossed most of the remaining distance, joined up with the relief column and were already approaching the southern outskirts of the town. It was obvious, now, that they’d fought a major engagement, since there were many injured amongst them, but though bloodied they appeared to have suffered no losses.
War God Page 52
