Aztec Rage

by Gary Jennings

The city was a feast for our eyes, with amazing structures, including an observatory for studying the night sky. I was once again struck by the power and glory of an ancient civilization that could build such monuments, and, as Carlos pointed out, they did so without metal tools for carving and beasts of burden and wheeled carts for hauling.

  We stood in an incredible sports arena, a place for playing a ball game Carlos called pok-ta-pok. The arena was over two hundred paces long and about a hundred wide.

  “Pok-ta-pok was even more dangerous than bullfighting,” I said, pointing out a sculpted relief on the wall that showed the victor of a game holding the severed head of a loser.

  The name for the Chichén Itzá pyramid, El Castillo, didn’t originate from the indios but from the Spaniards who found the structure to have a castlelike appearance.

  I found the naked stone edifices as strange and eerie as the dark, twisted formations in the caverns we had explored. Picking our way through brush and vines to see previous structures had distracted me from the magnificence of the sites, but with the center of an ancient city laid out before us, its grandeur left me thunderstruck. How could the indios, whom I had always thought of as common savages, have built this magnificent city that lay before my eyes?

  The Castillo pyramid, Carlos said, was about eighty feet high. “Ninety-one stairs at each of its four sides and another step on the top platform, for a total of 365. That this equals the number of days in the solar year, the time it takes the earth to revolve around the sun, was no accident. Mayan astronomers of that period were more advanced than their European counterparts. See that elegant building over there? It’s called the Observatory, and it may be where sky watchers gazed at the heavens and made their calculations.”

  He pointed at the carving of a plumed serpent at the top of the pyramid. “Quetzalcóatl, the god called the feathered serpent, was known to the Mayas as Kukulcán. During the spring and autumnal equinoxes, shadows cast by the setting sun give the appearance of a snake slithering down the Castillo’s steps. It’s said to be an eerie sight.”

  We paused by a cenote among the ruins. More a sunken lake than a well, it was oblong, over 150 paces in length and a bit less than that in width. The sides were 60 feet high from water level to the ground surface we stood upon.

  “The cult of the Cenote,” Carlos said.

  “Señor?”

  “Just as other indio nations believed the gods had to be fed blood to appease them, the Mayans also practiced human sacrifice. Tying their victims up, they threw them into this cenote as well as others in the Yucatán. They had priests, called chacs, who held onto the arms and legs of the sacrificial victims. A moment ago we passed a life-size stone figure of a man lying on his back with his head up and his hands holding a bowl, the god named Chac Mool. Human hearts were deposited in his bowl after they were ripped out of the victim’s chest.”

  Carlos said the Romans, Huns, and other European tribes, crusaders, perpetrators of the Inquisition, infidels of Mohammed, and Mongol hordes all had violent pasts. What was it in mankind that sought satisfaction in bloody slaughter?

  Even before we set up a proper camp, the sergeant and other soldiers joined Carlos and the rest of the expedition in rushing to the cenote to take a swim in the cool, dark water. They could have their swim. I didn’t care how long it had been since someone had been sacrificed in the pool; it was haunted as far as I was concerned.

  While they swam, I took a walk to the Castillo pyramid. The steps up were not for the faint of heart, being nearly vertical. Although most vegetation had been cleared, a twisted vine could still snarl a foot and send one tumbling down.

  I was three-quarters of the way up when I saw something that caused me to stop and stare. Splattered on the upper steps were bloodstains. Dried blood, but in this hot climate, blood would dry almost as soon as it hit the warm stone.

  I turned and looked behind me as if expecting to find my nocturnal hounds of hell at my back.

  They were.

  Hundreds of indios had crept into the cleared area between the Castillo, where I climbed, and the cenote where the rest of the expedition was swimming. They had come silently, not breathing a word or snapping a twig.

  Besides their large number, the first thing that struck me was their battle dress, their spears, shields, and elaborate headdresses. I had seen them before; at least I had seen their spiritual brothers. Etched on many of the walls of the indio ruins we had examined, were these warriors of the past, from the days when great indio empires ruled what they called the One World.

  In the center of this indio mass, one figure stood out, a warrior with the most elaborate headdress, a great spray of brilliant feathers, green and yellow and red.

  I didn’t need an introduction; he had to be Canek, the rebellious Mayan warlord who had gathered an army and was reviving the “old ways.” He raised his spear and yelled. Immediately, a great roar erupted from the warriors. They charged up the steps of the Castillo for me and rushed for the cenote.

  I pulled the machete out of my backsheath. As the warriors raced up the steps screaming like ghouls from the indio underworld, my last thought was to wonder what it would be like to watch my companions being eaten one by one while I awaited my turn.

  FIFTY-ONE

  CANEK’S NEGATIVE VIEW of life was understandable; while most Spaniards viewed the indios as a physically attractive race, Canek was the exception that tested the rule. A mortally homely brute, he had a broad nose that dominated his face, below which his front teeth protruded like flat fangs over his lower lip. His massively menacing upper torso and his abnormally long arms gave him a serious advantage in reach. The loathsomeness of his appearance was exceeded only by the surliness of his disposition.

  We were taken captive and put into wood cages like beasts penned up for the slaughter, which was exactly what we were. The cages were lined up in a long row, with three and four of us to a cage. I was caged with Carlos and the inquisitor-priest, Fray Baltar.

  Late that afternoon, they opened the first cage in line and pulled the three occupants out. They removed the men’s shirts and pants.

  “It’s starting,” I told Carlos.

  Carlos didn’t look. He sat in a corner with his face covered with his hands. Baltar gaped in wide-eyed horror. I knelt, with my hands clutching the wood bars, and watched it with grim determination. Somehow, someway, I would get out and take my amigo with me.

  Instead of taking the men up the steps of the pyramid, they were dragged to a fire. One of the men had his face forced down close enough to the flames to breathe in the smoke of whatever they were roasting. And as soon as he was pulled back, he appeared weak kneed, unable to stand without resistance. I could see that his face had lost the terror that had twisted his features a moment before.

  “What are they doing?” the Inquisitor asked.

  “Killing his resistance.” I didn’t know which of the mind-stealing substances the Mayans were using, but once it was inhaled, the men became passive and manageable.

  They took the first man to the steps of El Castillo, a warrior at each arm, holding him up, half-dragging him because he couldn’t keep his feet under him. At the base, two other warriors grabbed his feet and helped take him up. Waiting at the top were three Mayans, one dressed almost as splendidly as Canek. I took them to be the high priest and his assistants. The man was laid, face up, on a curved stone slab.

  My hands shook as I realized why the slab was curved upward: It forced his back to arch, shoving his chest up. As the warriors held the man down, the high priest stepped up, screeching incantations that were alien to me as he waived a dagger with a razor-sharp obsidian blade.

  Carlos began saying a prayer. Fray Baltar shot a look back at him but was too morbidly preoccupied with the horror unfolding before our eyes to remember his duty toward the dying.

  The high priest reared back, then lunged down, plunging the blade deep into the victim’s chest, blood spraying from the wound.

  I gaspe
d, and my head swirled as the high priest stuck his hand into the hole and pulled out the man’s still beating heart, lifting the blood-dripping organ high overhead to the roar of the assembled throng.

  Carlos sobbed behind me. All along the cages came cries of panic, shouts of anger, wailing prayers. I let go of the bars and turned my back to the madness as one by one, the Spanish scholars, their minds filled with great thoughts and the knowledge of the ages, were led up the steep steps of the pyramid to be sacrificed by savages.

  After the “religious” ceremony, in which their blood was proffered to the “gods,” they held their feast. They lay the bodies on the ground in sight of those of us in the cages. Using obsidian knives, they methodically began to cut them up, snapping bones to break the pieces apart. I didn’t watch but couldn’t get out of my mind the image of the sawing I’d done on the hacendado’s leg.

  They sacrificed and ate some of us each night for several days. Carlos, the fray, and I were the last victims . . . and not by chance. They had identified Fray Baltar as a priest—he was in his church robes when they captured him—and priests were considered special. I suppose it was like saving the best bite for last.

  Among those at the cenote, Carlos had been the only one near enough to a weapon—and brave enough—to fight back. He killed one of the heathens before he collapsed under their blows. In their pagan minds he was a worthy warrior.

  And Don Juan de Zavala . . . Why was I chosen? My flesh was highly prized because I had put up the most ferocious fight. I had killed four of them with my machete and given violent wounds to five more before they took me down.

  Carlos understood snatches of their devilish Mayan tongue. Canek, he said, had personally staked a claim to my heart and that the rest of me, the edible parts, he would distribute to the savages who finally brought me down.

  These creatures believed that eating the flesh of brave men instills that person’s courage in them. The warriors we had killed were also eaten, to pass on their courage to the living.

  “We’ll be dressed as Mayan warriors when they sacrifice us,” Carlos said. “That way the gods will know we’re worthy warriors.”

  “I must thank the pagan bastardos for the honor,” I said.

  After watching them eat the members of the expedition and their own slain warriors, I regretted not having cut my own throat with the machete instead of fighting back.

  One of Canek’s underlings, a warrior who, we had already learned, spoke a little Spanish, came to the cage. I discovered the inquisitor-priest also spoke a little Mayan because he started jabbering away in the mixture of the two languages.

  I asked Carlos what he was saying. “He’s telling him that it’s okay to eat us, but he should be spared because he’s a holy man.”

  He didn’t get across his message very well because the guard just gave him a stupid stare.

  “Is that what they taught you in the Inquisition, to save yourself at the expense of your sheep?” I asked.

  He was bent over, his hands on the bars of the cage, his back to me. He turned to me just long enough to make a street-gesture I hadn’t used since I was kicked out of the seminary. I kicked him in the rear, not in but under the buttocks, my boot toe hammering his cojones. His head crashed into the cage, and he went down, grabbing at his male parts, groaning.

  The indios at the cage enjoyed the violence. I couldn’t quite stand up but did the best I could and took a bow.

  “Miserable bastards,” I said. “Him and those savages.”

  “He’s just trying to save his own life,” Carlos said.

  “You’re too damn forgiving. He took an oath to minister to us all when he put on the cloth.”

  “He took an oath to save souls, not lives,” Carlos corrected.

  “And what about these creatures . . . What oath did they take?”

  “The blood covenant. They’re simply doing what they believe will please their gods. Isn’t that what our churches do when they burn us at the stake for our real or imagined transgressions? What infidels do when they kill people for not bowing to Mecca eight times a day? What—”

  I leaned over and grabbed the front of his shirt. “Amigo, this is no time to be scholarly and understanding. These savages are going to rip out our hearts and eat us alive.”

  “To defeat your enemy, you must know the enemy.”

  He was pale and weak. He’d been cut in the fight with the indios and had lost blood. I had removed the flint point of an arrow from the side of his leg.

  “My point is that deriding these people as mindless savages wins you nothing. Did our conquistadors treat their ancestors any differently than they are treating us now?”

  “Yes . . . maybe they robbed, raped, and killed them, but, Señor Scholar, Cortés didn’t eat them!”

  Arguing with Carlos was pointless. Since he learned of France’s attack on Spain and the uprising it had provoked, he’d changed. He was an unqualified admirer of all things French, but he was also a Spaniard. In his own mind, he justified spying for the French on the grounds that it might rid us of an incompetent Spanish king and help to inspire an Age of Enlightenment in the country. But Napoleon had put his own brother on the throne and murdered those Spaniards who opposed the foreign king. Eh, that would make the blood boil in any patriot.

  For Carlos, Napoleon’s betrayal of the Spaniards who supported him had been devastating. Perhaps in his own mind, being murdered and cannibalized by the savages was just punishment. For me, the world was simpler. I had no interest in kings and wars, in who was right and wrong, good or bad. I just didn’t want to be eaten. I had to come up with an escape plan. And, because Carlos had always stood up for me, I included him in it. As for Fray Baltar . . . he could poison the indios with his toxic soul.

  The warriors drifted away from the cages and gathered at the cenote, the deep watery pit where the expedition members had been swimming when they were captured.

  “What’s going on?” I asked Carlos as I heard excited yelling.

  “One of our people, Ignacio Ramírez, a scholar of primitive art, has wavy hair. Because the waves mimic waves in water, the indios believe that the water gods are especially pleased when someone with wavy hair is sacrificed. To please the water gods, they are ripping out Ignacio’s heart and then throwing it into the pool of water.”

  Carlos spoke with little emotion. He could have been describing the pictures on the wall of an indio temple. Again, he seemed resigned to his fate, as if he deserved to be eaten alive. The last thing I wanted for myself was my just deserts.

  Late in the afternoon the indios took us out of the cage and dressed us in the ceremonial garb we would wear for our sacrifice. After we were put back in to await our turns, there was still a cage of expedition members ahead of us. I whispered to Carlos, “Rub dirt on the exposed parts of your body so you’re not white.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “So you can pass for an indio, at least under the cover of darkness.”

  Fray Baltar overheard me. Since my well-placed kick, he had stayed at the opposite end of the cage, looking in my direction only to glare balefully at me.

  “I’m going with you.”

  “No, Señor Inquisitor, we need you to stay around and get eaten while we make our escape. You don’t mind sacrificing yourself for your fellow man, do you? Maybe if you sacrifice yourself, God will forgive you for all the evils you’ve done in His name.”

  “God will punish you,” he snarled.

  “He has. Being caged with you is hell.”

  I would have enjoyed throwing the fray to the savages piece by piece, but I had to let him come along to keep him from exposing my plan.

  While we half-dozed in the afternoon heat, Carlos told me about an early expedition of Spanish conquistadors who invaded the Yucatán in search of treasure. Tales of gold and silver lured part of the army to Chichén Itzá, where an indio force attacked them.

  “The battle raged all day, and 150 Spanish were killed while the others t
ook refuge in the ruins. That night, the Spanish waged periodic assaults on the indio camp to disturb their sleep. Finally, in the wee hours, with the indios exhausted, the Spaniards tied a dog to the clapper of a bell and put some food slightly out of reach of the dog. Earlier, the Spanish had rung the bell at odd intervals, to let the indios hear that they were still present. But this time, while the dog rang the bell as it tried to get to the food, the Spanish silently slipped away.”

  That evening as the indios worked up an appetite, dancing and drinking jungle beer, I used the piece of flint I had removed from Carlos’s leg to cut the vines that were used like rope to hold the cage together, opening up one side. I urged Carlos and the inquisitor-priest to follow me, and we crawled to the mountainous supply of corn and discarded husks near the cages.

  I used the flint again, this time with the metal of my belt to ignite the dried husks. We quickly spread the fire, which a fortuitous breeze whipped into an inferno. Indios from all around raced to it. Dressed as Mayan warriors, we melted in with them, making our escape through the drunken confused masses.

  We were away from the main body of indios and about to break into the dense jungle when Fray Baltar bumped into a sentry. The indio stared at him. The priest turned and pointed at Carlos and me. “There!” he shouted in Mayan. Ay! I should have followed my first instinct and slit the priest’s throat.

  Carlos and I ran into the darkness, into the jungle, with the sentry trailing us with his spear. Under cover of the brush, I suddenly whipped around and went low, letting the guard fall over me. He rolled, raising his spear as I leaped on him. The blade sliced me across the left shoulder, but when he twisted onto his hands and knees to rise, I got on his back. Tightening my forearm around his throat, I shoved a knee in his back and broke his neck.

  But now more indios were thrashing through the foliage. I grabbed Carlos by the arm. “Run!”

  We ran, tripping and falling along the way, making slow progress. Luckily the savages behind us fared no better and were hopelessly confused as to where we were. I pulled myself loose from the clinging bush and continued leading Carlos deeper into the thickets.