Aztec Odyssey

by Jay C. LaBarge

  Nick could still remember the warmth of her hand growing cool, then cold, being unable to let go, his grief only assuaged by the look in his father’s eyes as he held his dear Josephine, a depth of love Nick could only admire, the resolute look that told they would be together again, and from this day forward Dad was only marking time.

  But Dad had managed to carve out an existence that was surprisingly fulfilling. Instead of folding back within himself, he always joked he was still exploring, still learning, and until he gave up on those they could all stop with all the damn fussing and worrying about him. He certainly still had much to offer his sons, daughter-in-law and grandchildren. Hell, maybe one day he would even meet the future Mrs. Nick, if one of the blind dates Sophie and Charlie arranged ever worked out and Nick would stop looking for the perfect woman. Besides, Al had already found Josephine, and there was only one of those.

  But Dad’s death, the way it happened, still made no sense. Nick looked at the grass under his shoe, if grass was what you could call it. More like what you see under the forest trees, lonely sprigs of grass, lots of pine needles, roots exposed by high waves, a bit of gravel. The boys always joked that Dad should plant a lawn, but he would say, “It will all turn to this anyway, so I’ll save the trouble and go exploring instead.”

  The police seemed satisfied with the events surrounding the accident. They seemed thorough and competent enough, but they didn’t know Albert like Nick knew Albert. Charlie was right, Nick was like his dad. They were both in tune with each other, knew what the other was thinking, could communicate with just a glance, and handled things exactly the same. And how Dad had died, how he got into the situation that killed him, that was not how Nick would have handled it, nor was it a situation he would have put himself in the first place. When pressed he couldn’t explain it, but there, behind the temples, behind the dull ache, in that deep part of the brain where thoughts go to work themselves out with no consciousness, it did not feel right.

  The police had come, Charlevoix’s finest, immediately after Nick had called them in a strangely, some would say clinically, detached voice. It took no more than twenty minutes for the cruiser to reach the LaBounty place out on the east shore of the lake. They treated it like an accident scene. Nick had already pulled Al’s body from its ice encased tomb, set him off the side of the hole in the ice, with the ice around the middle giving the impression of someone in an inner tube. That would have to be chiseled or melted off later. When Nick had first seen the arm sticking out of the ice, he was tempted to run out and dig with his bare hands. But he knew his dad was already dead, rushing would only erase clues. His archeology training had kicked in and he immediately went into forensic mode. He had done this dozens of times on various digs around the world when coming across finds. It was only that this time the body was days old instead of thousands of years old, there were clues that had to be gathered before weather or the ignorant obliterated them—and the fact that the body just happened to be that of his father.

  Nick had immediately stopped moving where he sat on the dock on shore, looked at the tracks he had made in approaching the edge of the frozen lake, and pulled out his iPhone. The good news was it was only a couple of months old and had an excellent built-in camera. The bad news was its predecessor was still in the bottom of an outhouse in the hinterlands of Michigan, destined to be ever further buried, inch by inch. Nick stood without shifting his feet, and started photographing his own footprints, then all markings on the ground in a 360-degree radius. When he was confident he had captured everything as best he could, he worked his way out onto the lake, walking obliquely in approaching the arm, careful to avoid making or obscuring any possible tracks.

  The ice was thick and solid, and the surface hard and windblown. No markings anywhere, except for the striations from constant winds, with coarse hard snow pebbles beating the surface with the periodic gusts. He took more photos, including panoramas, and worked his way to the arm itself. Being the only thing sticking up, it had attracted birds, who had done a number on the exposed fingers.

  Definitely Dad, I would know that wedding ring anywhere, but strange, no gloves. One thing that struck Nick was that the surface of the lake was smooth as far as the eye could see, except for a fault line in the ice right where the arm protruded. There were no ice shacks out, but that wasn’t unusual, as there were other lakes nearby with much better fishing.

  Something had reflected in the sun about 200 yards further out to the middle, and he wandered toward it. As he approached, he saw that it was a small frozen pile of ice from an ice auger that had been used to drill a hole. Well, maybe a couple of holes close enough to form a larger hole, it was hard to tell as it had all filled and frozen again. There was nothing around this, except for the same windblown striations on the ice surface. Nick snapped a few quick shots and worked his way back to the arm. After evaluating and documenting the situation, Nick got off the ice, photographed everything completely around the camp, then grabbed the tools he would need, and worked to remove the body. Nobody was going to see any of this before he did, and nobody was going to mess with his evidence.

  Ultimately the police report and autopsy drew different conclusions than Nick did, and while he tried to convince Charlie about his intuitions, it was all just that, speculation. The police had ruled it an accidental death by drowning. He must have wandered out on the ice, maybe he got disoriented or had a small stroke, lost his bearings and then fell through.

  “Dad would never just wander out on the ice, in the cold, with no gloves. Christ, he didn’t even like to fish, much less ice fish,” Nick had argued with Charlie. “And the coat on his left arm was pulled up, way up, where he bit himself. I’m not buying that gloves are somewhere at the bottom of the lake, his good gloves were in the cabin. And what about the tracks, he is in the lake, there are critter tracks everywhere, but no tracks out of the cabin or on the shore anywhere. I’m not buying that he bit himself in a panic while drowning, not there, right over his only tattoo, the only bite mark anywhere. And his leg was cut, like he was pushed down with something. I got a funny feeling about all this, and I think he was murdered, and he was trying to tell us something.”

  Charlie had held his tongue, lost in his own thoughts. He was as taken aback as Nick with his father’s sudden death, but wondered if Nick was overly distraught, and if it was impacting his ability to see things clearly through the grief. He suspected neither of them would be seeing things clearly for quite a while. The best he could do was to walk over and hug his brother while they both sobbed.

  “Enough of this,” Nick said, snapping back to the present. He stood up, wiped the dampness from his jeans where he had been sitting, and walked back to the cabin. He put on the blues playlist his dad liked so much and smiled at the labyrinth of hidden speakers throughout the cabin, inside and out, now vibrating to the great BB King belting out The Thrill Is Gone.

  He went through the familiar process of making two Old Fashions. The right amount of whiskey, bitters, simple syrup, a dark cherry, and a single, fat ice cube that would melt slowly, thereby adding only a little water at a time to release the hidden notes of the whiskey.

  Back to the dock he went, listening to the King crooning from rock shaped speakers set in the ground.

  “Cheers, Old Man, here’s to unraveling some of your many mysteries,” he said.

  And with that Nick poured one Old Fashioned into the lake, and then sat, slowly and quietly pouring the other into himself.

  Chapter 5 – April 13, 1521

  Asupacaci chose the shallower of the two fords the scouts had previously found across the Pánuco River. The water was only up to their thighs. While the other ford had been narrower, it channeled the water deeper and faster, and was deemed too risky. The scouts crossed before sunrise, screening the entire caravan. They were followed by one group of warriors, mostly the elite Eagle and Jaguar Knights, then the porters, seventeen heavily laden wagons, and all the spare horses.

  Un
fortunately, the last two trailing wagons got stuck in the sticky mud midstream, which had been churned to a morass by the prior wagons. No amount of manpower from the trailing group of servants or warriors could dislodge them, which seemed to sink even deeper with the handling. This is where the wisdom of bringing the Spaniards along proved its worth. They told Cipactli, through Friar Rodrìguez, what must be done. He in turn told the warriors, and they grabbed a few of the Spaniards, led them to the wagons already across the river, where they unhitched those teams of horses and double teamed them onto the stuck wagons. The Spaniards grabbed the traces of the horses, the warriors grabbed the sightless Spaniards to guide them, and with much yelling and exhorting of the horses, got the wagons released from the grip of the muck and safely to the other side.

  A brief war council was called by Asupacaci. As they were now in the land of the Chichimeca, he wanted to proceed peacefully, if at all possible. But under no circumstances did he want to be surprised.

  The leader of the scouts, Huitzilin, whose name meant Hummingbird and was appropriate for someone nervously flitting about as the eyes of the caravan, told him, with head bowed, that there had been no sign of anyone, only small abandoned villages.

  Cipactli didn’t find this odd, as the Chichimeca were known to be largely nomadic. But it gave Asupacaci a sense of foreboding, and orders were passed to proceed with caution, with the scouts and long runners screening the caravan checking in regularly.

  Onward, they proceeded on the agreed-upon route, and the cadence of the march, the steadily rising heat, the familiar sounds of the wheels turning, horses neighing, and whispered chatter, all slowly dulled everyone’s alertness. Asupacaci was shaken from his lethargy by a shout as they came upon one of the abandoned villages the scouts had told them about. It was just a cluster of fire pits, logs for sitting, and stick frames where the animal skins had hung.

  A girl of about eight or nine xihuitl, or years, peered out from behind a tree at the edge of the clearing, her eyes wide in bewilderment. She lost her natural shyness and walked straight toward the column, directly past a warrior and up to one of the Spaniards beside a horse. It wasn’t the beast that fascinated her. It was the hollow-eyed, bearded white face of the stumbling conquistador. The warrior next to him tapped him on the arm with his spear, and the Spaniard stopped walking and stood while slightly swaying, unsure what to do next. When he was tapped again on top of the shoulder, he knelt and felt small delicate fingers exploring his eye sockets, his face, his beard.

  Asupacaci and Cipactli sauntered over and stood next to the young girl, who touched a pox mark on her face, while also touching one on the Spaniard’s. The child showed no fear, only curiosity that was slowly hardening into something else, something far beyond her age and fair gender.

  Friar Rodrìguez was summoned over, and in several languages he slowly asked the girl where her people were. She immediately turned to him with stormy eyes when she at last recognized some of his words, and asked him, “If we are all alike on the outside, with the same markings, why aren’t we alike on the inside?”

  As the Friar turned to translate, the girl quickly reached under her garment, grabbed the Spaniard by his filthy matted hair with one hand, and sliced deeply across his throat with a sharp piece of obsidian. The Spaniard’s mouth opened, more in surprise than pain, but the only sound he could utter was a gurgling gasp. She stood her ground directly in front of his spurting neck, allowing the blood to pulsate on her and coat her, until he fell, lifeless to the ground.

  The Friar couldn’t see it, but she turned and glared directly at him with an otherworldly intensity and hissed, “An offering for the souls of my people.” She turned defiantly around and walked slowly back into the woods.

  Asupacaci, with no hint of surprise on his face, turned to Cipactli and said, “The plague precedes us, I didn’t think the cursed Spanish god had the strength to blow it this far north, this far away from those who carry it. But here it is. The girl survives it, but there is no one else anywhere around to be found. Now we know why there have been no eyes on us, even from a distance. For all we know, they may think we are the bringers of plague, and want to avoid any contact with us. None of these are favorable omens, but a sacrifice has been made, let us hope it appeases Huitzilopochtli.”

  With that he raised his hand and the caravan lurched forward, past the desolate village, past the pathetic crumpled figure lying lifeless next to the trail, past the small bloody footprints leading into the dark, foreboding forest.

  For five more risings of the sun they traveled, until they finally saw someone in the distance. Though they were still near the coast where the sun rose, the caravan had veered further inland. Asupacaci had not wanted to risk encountering any of the great floating Spanish log houses, which seemed to favor protected lagoons or what the coyote-men called “anchorages.” This led them to a long fertile valley between low mountains on their left and rolling hills on their right. More and more signs of habitation had started to appear, and the scouts reported that there were now definitely eyes upon them, eyes of the Chichimeca.

  Asupacaci called his scout leader in.

  Hummingbird prostrated himself on the ground awaiting orders. “Rise. It is time we met with the Chichimeca. They will either avoid us because they think the Spaniards carry plague, will attack us to wipe us out and take what we carry, or want to trade and allow passage. I would prefer to trade, but we must be ready for all contingencies.”

  Asupacaci placed a hand on Hummingbird’s shoulder and fixed him with a gaze from his piercing green eyes. “Choose one of your best Knights, have him wear his finest battle uniform, take this offering with him, and have him approach the Chichimeca alone. They will either torture him, kill him, or send him back with a delegation. But we will at last know their intentions.” Hummingbird grasped the offering with both hands, bowed, and left.

  Asupacaci climbed a small rise to the side of the column and could see Hummingbird choose a muscular Jaguar Knight named Xicohtencatl, or Angry Bumblebee, who was well known for his many brave exploits. He was especially noted for his ability to capture enemies for offerings to the gods during the ritualistic flower wars, but this time the tables were turned, and he was the offering. The other Knights at first looked dejected at not being chosen, but soon crowded around Bumblebee and reached out to touch him, wishing him luck, chanting him courage and their goodbyes. Bumblebee pulled his jaguar skin over his shoulders, affixed the helmet over his head so that his face was centered within its jaws, and straightened the feathers that protruded from the crown and made him look menacingly taller. He proudly held the gold ceremonial dagger aloft, intricately inlaid with jade, emerald, amber and obsidian, waved it to his comrades, and jogged down the path towards the Chichimeca, and the unknown.

  It was past the setting of the sun when camp was made, new scouts were sent out in all directions to secure the perimeter, and a meal was quickly eaten. Asupacaci and Cipactli stayed up and greeted the relieved scouts as they came in from the changing of the guard, to let them know by their simple presence that their dangerous work was acknowledged. Morale wasn’t an issue with the thirty knights and over one hundred warriors, they were all elite and came willingly when called upon. But the servants, many of them slaves, were becoming noticeably more agitated the further they traveled away from their homeland.

  “Another example will need to be made soon, if our quest starts to be compromised,” Asupacaci said to Cipactli, who had picked up on some of the same subtle signals. “And that one may be a good place to start,” he added, as he glanced at a porter who was constantly spreading exaggerated rumors and exciting the others.

  When Asupacaci took his familiar place under the wagon and rubbed his tired eyes, his thoughts drifted from the daily challenges of the expedition back to what had forced him on this journey in the first place. With a sigh and heaviness in his heart, he closed his eyes, and remembered how Cortés and his forces had fought their way back into Tenochtitlán
and took refuge inside the Spanish compound with Montezuma as their prisoner. Asupacaci and his brothers Chimalpopoca and Tlaltecatzin were there as well and witnessed what happened next. Realizing how desperate their plight was, Cortés demanded that Montezuma address the Aztecs pressing in on them from all sides, to ask for safe passage for the Spanish to leave the city and pushed him out onto the terrace.

  Instead, Montezuma exhorted his people to resist the Spaniards with all their strength and with their every breath. At that moment, he, the Hueyi Tlatoani of the Aztecs, the Emperor of all the Mexica, and his people were one. With the words still on his lips, he staggered backward and fell dead, run through by a steel sword in the back by the treacherous Cortés, as soon as La Malinche screamed what he was saying. An audible groan came from the Aztecs outside, and stones and darts started showering the terrace and the palace with renewed fury.

  Being short of food, water, gunpowder, and supplies, Cortés decided they would have to make their escape at night. In order to buy time and possibly put the Aztecs off their guard, an emissary was sent to negotiate a ceasefire and ask for safe passage. In return the Spaniards would relinquish any treasure they had.

  Asupacaci had heard that those Aztecs outside the compound elected Montezuma’s brother Cuitláhuac as Hueyi Tlatoani to lead the resistance in his absence. He knew with his uncle in charge there would be no safe passage. Cortés issued orders to prepare to leave, to pack as much of the treasure as was possible, and for any Spaniard to load up with as much gold as they wished. He also told them to take the highest-ranking nobles as hostages, and to prepare a portable bridge to pass over the broken causeways which led out of the city.

  On La Noche Trist, or The Night of Sorrows, the Spanish attempted to sneak out to the west under the cover of a rainstorm. They made good headway down the causeway, until they were noticed by an Eagle Warrior below and a priest on top of the Hueteocalli, or the Great Temple pyramid. As soon as the alarm was sounded, the Aztecs swarmed to all sides of the causeway, including hundreds of canoes. The vanguard with Cortés and the portable bridge made determined progress, but the middle and back of the column, in the dark, in the rain, and encountering increasingly broken sections of the causeway, struggled mightily. Conquistadors fighting for their lives, weighed down by their greed and on slippery ground, fell in increasing numbers. Many were simply grabbed by the Aztecs in canoes, and fell flailing into the deep water, unable to rise due to their armor and the weight of hidden gold.