Aztec Fire

by Gary Jennings

  One man had an arm tied behind him, the other man had both arms free but had a length of rope tied to his legs in a manner that let him still move about, but forcing him to take shorter steps.

  I realized that the man whose arm he’d tied had the longer reach and the man whose feet he’d hobbled was the faster of the two.

  It also struck me that from what I had heard about Jen, he would care little about the justice or correctness of the outcome, but would have ulterior motives for lengthening the bout. Looking about casually, I saw what he was up to: The handicaps not only equaled out the match based upon the relative strength of the two combatants, but would make the match longer and more enjoyable to the Bendahara and the rest of the “audience.”

  I spotted the onlookers peeking out from bushes and windows.

  The minister had no doubt given invitations to what the combatants thought was a private fight to the death.

  The weapons Jen provided them were blades of equal length and sharpness.

  “What do you think of my fairness?” Jen asked.

  “You have the wisdom of Solomon, Your Excellency.”

  “Solomon?”

  “An infinitely wise king, my lord. When two women each claimed they were the mother of a newborn babe, Solomon settled their dispute by offering to sever the baby in half. When one woman protested, and the other said ‘Cut away,’ Solomon gave the baby to the woman who protested, saying she had proven herself to be the true mother.”

  Staring at me, he stroked his beard and nodded approvingly. “No,” he said, “I am even wiser than Solomon. For troubling me with their petty squabble, I would have had the two women scourged, and then sold them and their child into slavery.”

  “Very wise, Your Excellency,” I croaked.

  He flipped his hand at the two combatants who kowtowed to him, then rose and faced each other. They bowed and began the dance of death.

  “There is court gossip that the larger man is a friend and that I have created a pretense at equality to give him a better chance at winning because the smaller man is the better fighter.”

  I nodded. “Faster and shorter can give an advantage.”

  “The gossip angered me for two reasons. The first is the claim that I arranged the match to help a friend. As long as these foolish courtiers have worked for me, they still do not know me at all.”

  “In which regard don’t they understand you, Excellency?”

  “Claiming that I would go out of my way to help a friend. Will they never understand?” He then treated me to a small derisive laugh and a smile of mean merriment. “I have no friends.”

  As the two men circled each other, rather than enlightening me as to the second reason why the court gossip annoyed him, the Bendahara compared the war between nations with the two-man struggle before us.

  “In any engagement, there are always questions of who is the bigger opponent, the more mobile, the more reckless, the more aggressive. Who is forced by necessity to take the defensive or adopt the offensive. So it is with nations. The bigger, more aggressive, more powerful, more mobile opponent will usually win the fight.

  “But not always. A general can prevail against a larger force if he is clever enough. The greatest military strategist of all time, Sun Tzu, wrote twenty-three hundred years ago that if your opponent is in every way your superior, you might still prevail.”

  “How?”

  “You must, Sun Tzu said, hold hostage what your adversary holds dear.”

  While Jen talked, the two men in the “ring” slowly circled one another, sparring and feinting with their daggers, each looking for an opening.

  “Enemies may spar with each other interminably,” Jen said, “but at some point in the contest a moment of truth arrives and a decisive blow must be struck. The sparring can go on endlessly, but the decisive blow—when it is struck—usually takes less than a second.

  “The same in war,” Jen said. “After all the planning, all the preparation, the clash of arms and armies, all the sparring, victory or defeat can come down to a quick decisive blow that destroys the enemy.”

  The two knife-fighters closed, the bigger man shouldering the smaller man up against the low wall, which enclosed the fighting area. To block the man’s overpowering strength, the smaller man had to drop his blade and grab the other man’s knife arm with both hands.

  As they struggled, a person in black suddenly appeared from behind a black curtain, draping an adjacent doorway. Sneaking up behind the bigger man, he slipped a knife in the man’s back.

  The person in black immediately ducked back behind the black curtain and was gone.

  “Surprise is the mother of victory,” Jen said. “Now you see, Gunsmith, that the most decisive blows against a more powerful enemy are delivered through stealth and cunning. Thus we must defeat our enemies through unexpected stratagems—ploys which they could not anticipate.”

  In other words, through treachery, I thought.

  The Bendahara stared at me without smiling. “The second reason is that I would help one of my favorites. The talk offends me because the fools believe that they can anticipate my moves. The demonstration today will once again let them know that they will never know from which direction I strike.”

  He waved me away with a flick of his wrist and I walked back to my new workplace.

  He had gotten his message across loud and clear: He had surprised the courtiers by having his favorite, the bigger man, killed, to turn the tables on the courtiers who had guessed that he was planning to aid the man.

  And the message about never knowing where and when he would strike was a double-edged sword: The other side of the sword was hovering over the necks of his two new gunsmiths.

  PART XX

  Great Beauty Is Invariably Bloodthirsty.

  —An Ancient Adage

  EIGHTY-FIVE

  WHILE INSTRUCTING THE Mage on gun and powder fabrication the next day, I asked her how the sultan planned to use the firearms and gunpowder.

  “The greatest treasure of our region is not gold or silver, we find neither under our ground, but the pungent and fragrant nuts and seeds found in the islands that Europeans call the Spice Islands. For a long time, the Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch all battled for control of the islands and the trade in their spices. The Dutch won control, but during those many years while European nations were occupied by the wars of the warrior-king Napoleon, the Dutch loosened their grip on the trade.

  “For twenty years the sultan has collected tribute from the native leaders on the islands in return for protecting them from predators and pirates. But now the Dutch have returned and the native leaders will no longer pay the sultan. They say that the great warship the Dutch sent to once again dominate the islands is too powerful to resist and offers better protection.”

  “How does the sultan plan to get back control?”

  “He has invited the Dutch governor to come here and negotiate a treaty. The Dutch believe the treaty will acknowledge their dominance in exchange for a small payment to the sultan. But he will have a surprise for them.”

  “His arsenal of cannons and other European weapons?”

  “The Dutch governor won’t leave the ship, but instead of welcoming the ship when it enters our harbor—”

  “The sultan will open fire on it.”

  She clapped her hands. “Exactly. You see, you and your friend have been given a great and glorious task. Imagine the rewards you and your companion will get when your weapons sink the warship.”

  Ayyo … I could easily imagine what our “rewards” will be.

  I could also imagine that after blowing away our artillery positions, the Dutch warship would turn its guns on the palace and the rest of the city.

  “But more important, Gunsmith,” the Mage went on, “the sultan is fighting the Dutch to honor his religion. For centuries the European powers had crusaded against the Muslim states of North Africa and the Middle East. The sultan believes it is his duty to Allah to fight t
he infidels.”

  I was taken aback by the Mage’s response. I had never considered that the sultan would war on another nation as a matter of religious principle. The powerful men in the history of New Spain had not really been motivated by religious fervor, but military honors, sexual despoiling, and a lust for treasure.

  I had never heard of a potentate taking a bloody military stand based primarily on heartfelt religious beliefs.

  “What does the sultan plan to do with his control over the Spice Islands once he gains it?”

  “Give them back to the Dutch for a much greater payment than they offered before.”

  Now that was a kind of religious fervor I recognized.

  EIGHTY-SIX

  THE LONGER LUIS and I stayed in the islands, the more urgent it became that we had to escape. We were not cut out for the claustrophobic confinement of palace life—with a sword hanging over our heads. Nor was I comfortable with Luis’s endless need for dangerous sexual conquests—just as he once found his way to the quarters of Anak’s lonely wives, he now talked about invading the sultan’s harem.

  “The girls stick their heads out from behind window curtains in their second floor rooms to watch me work.” He grinned as he whispered, “Sometimes they expose more than their faces to me.”

  Ayyo … nothing was sacred to Luis and nothing was more sacred to a potentate than his harem girls … except for his treasure, and Luis even talked incessantly about having learned of an underground passage we could use to blow our way into the room that was reputed to be filled with chests of gold and gems.

  It was inevitable that we would eventually run afoul of the wrath of the sultan or his vicious chief minister because Luis violated a vestal virgin, I failed to kill enough Dutch, or we violated any one of an endless number of taboos and be subjected to the death of ten thousand cuts—or a hundred thousand, whatever it was. Not that the number mattered—who would be counting?

  I had also noticed a change in the way the Mage acted toward me. She had become extremely friendly, finding reasons to touch me or brush against me when we were working together.

  I found her attractive, but sensed an aura of dark mystery and even danger emanating from her.

  Devising an escape plan—and acting upon it—became more urgent every day.

  Luis had much more freedom of movement than I did because he made finding parts and scouting for gunpowder ingredients reasons to leave. His efforts would inevitably bring him to the warehouses along the docks and the taverns where foreign sailors and pirates gathered. Luis was too smart to put out feelers about buying passage for two slaves. “The captain who loses the most at cards and doesn’t want to return home broke is the ship we will book passage on … the night before it is about to be carried out of the bay by the tide.”

  I had an idea formulating in my head on how to cover our escape, but needed to work out the details—along with how we could kill ourselves if we failed and were captured.

  EIGHTY-SEVEN

  THAT NIGHT THE Mage summoned me to her room. She sat in the oversized green cobra chair. Reclining on its coils, the Mage rested her nape on the snake’s throat … just below its hooded gape-jawed head.

  Smoking from a silver hookah, the Mage motioned me over.

  I had already discovered the Orient was a land of dream dust. My indio ancestors who used many dream-making drinks and smoke in their rituals, including peyote mushrooms that took one on journeys through time, would have appreciated the preoccupation in the East with dream-making.

  Handing me her hookah, she bade me sit at her side on the snake’s coils. I knew not to decline the offerings of the Mage—any more than I would have disobeyed the commands of the sultan or the Bendahara. Her wrath could be every bit as lethal as theirs.

  “Smoke deep,” the Mage said. “The smoke will make you see.”

  “Yes, Mage,” I said. “I am yours to command.”

  I didn’t have to ask what was in the pipe. A whiff of opium hit me the moment I walked in the door. And with it remembrances of another place where I had smelled opium and visited a woman of beauty and mystery. And a snake.

  I sampled the pipe. I had never smoked opium, and it jolted me with jarring force. My drug-deranged brain quickly and suddenly transformed the Mage into the cobra-hooded naga. As she looped coil after iron coil around me, I writhed in her serpentine embrace. I twisted, however, not so much out of fright as enchantment … I was mysteriously enthralled and eerily aroused.

  Then I dreamed we were in bed—locked in the throes of passion. I soon realized, however, that part of the experience wasn’t a dream. We were in her bed … amorously entwined. I knew the experience was real, because the sensations were too convulsively carnal, too ecstatically intense.

  For sure, I had a woman in my arms, not an opium-induced image.

  Yet at the same time her lovemaking was … unreal. Her magical mouth seemed all around me—everywhere at once, preternaturally powerful, capable of consuming me whole. Her lips laved my soul with the grace of angels even as her tongue teased and tantalized, tortured and titillated my tingling flesh. All the while her body undulated around mine—lithe and slender.

  In the dark of her bed, surrounded by the erotic mists of our opium dream, our bodies communed and commingled as one … in a night without end, void of reprisals, regrets, or recriminations.

  Hers was a body and a soul that wanted only me. A transcendent lover, she suffused every ounce and inch of my being with her own—with the beatific soul of an earthly goddess and the bodily desires of an incredibly erotic courtesan.

  Compared to my past life, the Mage’s boudoir—where I writhed in ecstasy in her arms and charms—seemed perfection incarnate.

  Could this be the paradisal peace I was born for—a lifetime with the Mage?

  Could this be my true destiny and destination?

  I dreamed such dreams for a while and they were sweet.

  But not for long.

  Nothing, in the end, is as it seems—not in the real world and never in a land of dreams.

  EIGHTY-EIGHT

  I HAD COME back from instructing workers on how to bore pieces of hardwood into cannon barrels when I saw Luis talking to the courtier who supervised the servants that brought us food and drink. Luis seemed to be gawking.

  “What did he tell you?” I asked Luis after the man left. “Has the sultan built special racks for us in his dungeon?”

  Luis shook his head and stared at me wide-eyed. “A very strange land. He told me that the Mage is also called the Exotic Eunuch.”

  “The what?”

  “Shhh, lower your voice. He said the Mage is a three treasure eunuch that had all her male parts removed but went a step further and had a Jade Chamber—”

  I walked away, unable to hear any more. I felt as if I’d been kicked by a mule in the stomach. I went into the workshop to be alone. I had never told Luis about my feelings for the Mage or that I had made love to her, but I think he guessed I had feelings for her. He was too smart an hombre not to read me like he reads others.

  The door opened and the Mage came in. She had a big smile but it faded when she saw my face.

  “You’re … a eunuch?” I asked, my voice quivering.

  She recoiled as if I had struck her and backed out the door, her eyes tearing, her chin trembling in and out. Pressing her hands to her face, she turned and fled.

  Luis came in a moment later. Here was a man who wasn’t intimidated by pirate fleets and island-smashing typhoons, yet he had an expression of deep concern.

  “Amigo, I think it is time we leave this island.”

  EIGHTY-NINE

  WE MADE OUR plans as we corned gunpowder a day later. I had already decided we needed a diversion that would stun and occupy not just the palace guards, but the spies and guards the sultan had posted at the wharf. In other words, capture the attention of the entire city.

  “We’re going to blow up the palace,” I told Luis. “Or at least make it appear t
hat way.”

  We would create a smoke and fire display like we did for Anak’s unfaithful wife. But this time on a grand scale, doing what Luis told me the French called a pyrotechnie display when they created dazzling fireworks for their kings at Versailles.

  “I’ve kept a good quantity of high-grade powder dry in pouches. It will ignite the lesser grade stuff that I’ll mix with other ingredients and put out so much smoke and the appearance of fire, it’ll look like the palace fell into the mouth of a volcano.”

  I would provide the smoke screen for our escape, but we wouldn’t get any farther than a rowboat at the docks if Luis didn’t get us money and passage.

  “I’ve had my eye on a Portuguese captain who has been losing every night at cards. His ship is sailing with the morning tide and he won’t want to go back to Lisbon with his pockets empty.”

  “What if he wins tonight?”

  Luis grinned. “He won’t. He’s lost so consistently, you’d think the player who’s been winning against him has been helped by the gods.”

  He didn’t need to explain.

  “We’ll need gold.”

  “I’ll gather that the moment you create your diversion. Anak’s wives during moments of ecstasy and gratitude confided in me that he keeps a sack of gold at the bottom of the well in their courtyard. He fishes it out with a long hooked pole he has hidden in the bushes. When people rush to see the palace on fire, I’ll go over the wall and fish for it.”

  It was a wall he had become very proficient at scaling.

  I busied myself preparing the fuses and series of explosives that would go off one after another turning the palace into chaos. I needed a slow fuse to begin the process because I planned to be outside the palace gate when the volcano erupted.