Aztec Autumn

by neetha Napew

  I intended not really a battle, but only a feint. We galloped, hooting and howling and discharging our arcabuces, out of the woods into the open ground before the palisaded post. And, as before, from the ports in that palisade, thunder-tubes spewed a spray of lethal scraps and fragments, but I was careful to keep us out of their range, and only one of our men suffered a minor shoulder wound. We remained out there, dancing our horses back and forth, making our threatening war cries and extravagantly threatening gestures, until the stockade gate opened and a troop of mounted soldiers came galloping out. Then, pretending to be intimidated, we all turned and galloped back the way we had come. The soldiers pursued us, and I made sure that we stayed ahead of them, but always in their sight. We led them all the way back to the ravine from which we had left our valley.

  Still taking care that the soldiers should not lose us in those mazes, we baited them through one very narrow notch where I had already posted arcabuz men on either side. Just as Knight Pixqui had predicted, the first discharges of those arcabuces brought down enough soldiers and their horses to block the passage for all the others behind. And those, milling about in confusion, were in a very short time destroyed by spears, arrows and boulders propelled by other warriors I had posted on the heights above. My Sobáipuri of course were pleased to confiscate the weapons and the surviving horses of all those dead Spaniards. But I was mainly pleased to have proven that our hideaway was indeed invulnerable. We could hold out here forever, if need be, against any force sent to assail us.

  There came a day when several of my scouts came to tell me, really gleefully, that they had discovered a new and major target for us to attack.

  "About three days east of here, Tenamáxtzin, a town almost as big as a city, but we might never have known it existed, except that we espied a mounted Spanish soldier and followed him. One of us who understands a little Spanish crept into the town behind him, and learned that it is a rich town, well built, called by the white man Aguascalientes."

  "Hot Springs," I said.

  "Yes, my lord. It is evidently a place to which the Spanish men and women resort for curative baths and recreations of other sorts. Rich Spanish men and women. So you can imagine the plunder we can take from it. Not to mention clean white women, for a change. I must report, though, that the town is heavily fortified, manned and armed. We cannot possibly take it without using our entire complement of warriors, both foot and mounted."

  I called for Nochéztli and repeated the report. "Prepare our forces. We will march two days from now. This time I want everyone to participate, including—we will doubtless have need of them—all our tíciltin, Swaddlers and Swallowers. This will be the most ambitious, audacious assault of all we have yet made, hence perfect practice for our eventual assault on the City of Mexíco."

  Fortuitously, the very next day, Pozonáli and Verónica returned to us, safely and together, and, though much fatigued from their long, hard ride, came immediately to report to me. So excited were they that they began speaking simultaneously in their separate languages of Náhuatl and Spanish.

  "The goldsmith thanks you for your warning, Tenamáxtzin, and sends you his warm regards in return..."

  "You are already famous in the City of Mexíco, my lord. I should say famous and feared..."

  "Wait, wait," I said, laughing. "Verónica first."

  "What I bring is the good news, my lord. To begin with, I did deliver your message to the Cathedral and, as you supposed, when your friend Alonso received it, whole troops of soldiers began combing the city to find the messenger who had brought it. But they could not, of course, I being indistinguishable from so many other girls like myself. And, as you commanded, I listened to many conversations. The Spaniards, by what means I do not know, are already aware that our whole army is encamped here in the Mixtóapan. So they are calling our insurrection 'the Mixton War,' and—I rejoice to report—it has much of New Spain in a panic. Whole families from the City of Mexíco and from everywhere else are crowding into the seaports—Vera Cruz and Tampico and Campeche and every other—demanding passages back to Old Spain, on any kind of vessel sailing there—galleons, caravels, victualler ships, anything. Many are saying fearfully that this is the re-conquest of The One World. It appears, my lord, that you are achieving your aim of chasing the interlopers—at least the white ones—entirely out of our lands."

  "But not all of them," said Iyac Pozonáli, frowning. "Despite Coronado's having taken so many of New Spain's soldiers on his northward expedition, the Viceroy Mendoza has still a considerable force in the City of Mexíco, some hundreds of mounted and foot soldiers, and Mendoza has taken personal command of them. Furthermore, as you expected, Tenamáxtzin, many of his tame Mexíca have enlisted to fight alongside him. So have many of these other treacherous peoples—the Totonáca, the Tezcaltéca, the Acólhua—who long ago aided the Conquistador Cortés in his overthrow of Motecuzóma. For the first time ever, Mendoza is allowing those indios to ride horses and carry thunder-sticks, and he is right now busily engaged in the training of them."

  "Our own people," I said sadly, "arrayed against us."

  "The city will maintain a sufficient defensive force," Pozonáli went on. "Thunder-tubes and such. But I would reckon, from what I learned, that the Viceroy Mendoza plans an offensive march to rout us out of here and destroy us before we ever get near the City of Mexíco."

  "Well, good luck to Mendoza," I said offhandedly. "However many his men, however well armed, they will be annihilated before they ever get to us here. I have experimented, and the Knight Pixqui was right when he said that these mountains are impregnable. In the meantime, I will be giving the viceroy further evidence of our might and our determination. Tomorrow we march east—every warrior, every horseman, every arcabuz man, every Purémpe granada-thrower, every last one of us who can wield a weapon. We are marching against a city called Hot Springs, and after we have taken that, the Viceroy Mendoza may decide to try to hide the City of Mexíco. Now, you two go and get some food and rest. I know you, Iyac, will want to be in the thick of the fight. And I shall want you near me, Verónica, to do the chronicling of this most epic of all our battles so far."

  XXXII

  Of the final battle of the "Mixton War"—of our defeat and the end of the Mixton War—I will speak only briefly, because it happened through my own grievous fault, and I am ashamed of that. Again, as I had done with other enemies, and even with some of the women in my life, I underestimated the cunning of my opponent. And I am paying for my mistake by lying here slowly dying—or slowly healing, I know not which, and do not much care.

  My army could still be here in the Miztóapan, entire and secure and healthy and strong and ready to do battle again, had I not taken them out of this valley. Just as we had earlier baited the Spanish trading post's soldiers into ambush here, so we were baited out of our safe haven. It was the doing of the Viceroy Mendoza. He, knowing that we were invincible in these mountains, almost untouchable, contrived to lure us out of them by, in a sense, offering us Aguascalientes. I do not blame my scouts who found that town—they are dead now, like so many others—but I have no doubt that the Spanish horseman they followed to that town was playing a part in Mendoza's plan.

  I took my whole army, leaving in the valley only the slaves and those males too old or too young to do battle. It was a three-day march to Hot Springs, and even before we got within sight of it, I began to suspect that something was not quite right. There were army outpost shacks, but no soldiers in them. When we approached the town, no thunder-tubes boomed out at us. When I sent my forward scouts sneaking warily into the town itself, there was no rattle of arcabuces, and the scouts came out, shrugging in puzzlement, to report that there seemed to be not a single person in the town.

  It was a trap. I turned in my saddle to shout "Retreat!" But it was already too late. Arcabuces now did rattle, and from all around us. We were surrounded by Mendoza's soldiers and their indio allies.

  Oh, we fought back, of course. The battl
e went on daylong, and many hundreds died on both sides. Death, that day, was a glutton. As I have remarked, any battle is a commotion and a confusion, and some of the dyings were done in curious ways. My knights Nochéztli and Pixqui both were pierced by balls discharged by our own arcabuz men, too recklessly employing their weapons. On the other side, Pedro de Alvarado—one of the first conquistadores in The One World, and the only one still being an active conquistador—died when he fell from his horse and the horse of another Spaniard trampled him.

  Since both our armies, mine and Mendoza's, were fairly equal in numbers and armament, it should have been a pitched battle, the victory going to the bravest and strongest and most clever. But what lost it for us was this. My men courageously engaged every white soldier they encountered, but too many of them (bar the Yaki) could not bring themselves to slaughter the men of their own race—the Mexíca and Texcaltéca and others—who were fighting on Mendoza's side. To the contrary, those traitors of our own race, naturally seeking to curry favor with their Spanish masters, hesitated not at all to slaughter us. I myself took an arrow in my right side, and that surely came from no Spaniard. For all I know, it came from some unknown relative of mine.

  One of our battlefield tíciltin jerked the arrow out of me—painful enough, that—then daubed the open wound with the corrosive xocóyatl—so much more painful that I actually and unmanfully screeched aloud. The tícitl could do no more for me, because next instant he fell dead of an arcabuz ball.

  When finally night came down, our armies disengaged—what was left of them—and the ragged remnant of ours, those who had horses, hastily withdrew to the westward. Pozonáli, one of the few survivors whom I knew by name, found Verónica on the hilltop whence she had watched the carnage, and brought her along as we made haste to get back to our mountain sanctuary. I could barely sit my saddle, so agonizing was the pain in my side, thus I was in no condition to worry about whether we were being pursued through the night.

  If we were, the pursuers never caught up to us. Three days later—days of terrible pain for me, and I was not the worst wounded of us—we arrived again at the Miztóapan, and wound our way through the maze of ravines (often losing our way, since we had not the experienced Knight Pixqui to guide us) and finally, faint with thirst and hunger and fatigue and loss of blood, found our valley again.

  I have not even tried to count the survivors of the Hot Springs battle, though I could probably do that without even scribbling down the little flags and trees and dots of numbers. Several who made it safely back here have since died of their wounds, because there are no tíciltin to treat them. All our tíciltin, like all our other hundreds of hundreds, are lying dead back yonder at Hot Springs. One Yaki tícitl is still alive, still with us, and he graciously offered to come and dance and chant at me, but I would be damned to Míctlan before I would submit to that kind of doctoring. So my wound has gradually festered, gone green, oozing pus. I blaze with fever, then shiver with chill and drift in and out of delirium, as once I did in an open acáli on the Western Sea.

  Verónica has faithfully and tenderly attended me, as best she can, applying hot compresses to the wound, and various tree saps and cactus juices that the old folk in camp recommend as curatives, but those things are doing no discernible good.

  During one of my lucid periods, you asked, Verónica, "What do we do now, my lord?"

  Trying to sound staunch and optimistic, I said, "We stay here, licking our wounds. We can hardly do anything else, and we are at least safe from attack here. I cannot even plan any further action until I am healed of this accursed injury. Then we shall see. In the meantime—I have been thinking—your chronicle of what the Spaniards call the Mixton War commenced with our devastation of Tonalá. It occurs to me that future historians of The One World might benefit from my telling and your writing of earlier events, of how this all began. Would it try your patience, dear Verónica, if I recounted to you practically my entire life?"

  "Of course not, my lord. Not only am I here to serve you, I should myself be... most interested... in hearing your life story."

  I meditated for some while. How to begin at the beginning? Then I smiled, as well as I was able, and said, "I think, Verónica, I have already, long ago, spoken to you the opening sentence of this chronicle."

  "I believe so, too, my lord. I kept it and still have it here."

  You shuffled among your sheaf of papers, brought one out and read it aloud:

  "I can still see him burning."

  "Yes," I said, and sighed. "Clever darling girl. Let us proceed from there."

  And, over I do not know how many ensuing days, though sometimes I was gabbling in delirium or mute with pain, I recounted everything that you have so far set down. Finally I said:

  "I have told you everything I can remember, even insignificant conversations and occurrences. Still, I suppose it is but a bare-bones recounting."

  "No, my dear lord. Without your knowing, ever since we have been together, I have been making notes of your merest passing remarks and my own observations of you, your nature, your character. Because, to tell the truth, I loved you, my lord, even before I knew you to be my father. With your permission, I should like to intermingle those observations of mine into the chronicle. It will put flesh on the bare bones."

  "By all means, my dear. You are the chronicler, and you know best. Anyway, you now know all there is to know, and all that any historian will need to know."

  I paused, then went on:

  "You now know also that you have a close cousin in Aztlan. If ever I recover from this wretched fever and weakness, I shall take you there, and Améyatzin will give you a warm welcome. You and Pozonáli. I do hope, child, that you will wed the lad. The gods preserved him through this last battle, and I truly believe they saved him just for you."

  My mind was beginning to waver and wander, but I added, "After Aztlan, perhaps we could go on... to The Islands of the Women. I was happy there..."

  "You are getting sleepy, lord father. And you have expended much energy, talking during these many days. I think you should rest now."

  "Yes. Let me say just one thing more, and please put it at the end of your chronicle. Our Mixton War is lost, and rightly so. I should never have begun it. From the day of your Grandfather Mixtli's execution, I resented and resisted the aliens among us. But, over time, I have met and admired many of those aliens—the white Alonso, the black Esteban, the padre Quiroga, your mulata mother Rebeca, and finally you, dear daughter, who commingle so many different bloods. I realize now—and I accept—I am even proud—that your lovely face, Verónica, is the new face of The One World. To you and to your sons and daughters and to The One World, I wish all good things."

  XXXIII

  My father died in his sleep that night. I was at his pallet side, and I drew the silken sheet over his face. He is at peace—I hope in bliss—in the warriors' afterworld of one of his gods.

  What is to become of the rest of us, I do not know.

  Verónica Tenamáxtzin de Pozonáli

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book, like much else in the author's life, could hardly have been accomplished without the teachings, assistance, encouragement, patience and toleration, over a good many years, of a good many good friends:

  The late Edward Amos, Radford, Virginia

  Alex and Patti Apostolides, El Paso, Texas

  The late Sadie Atkins, Paterson, New Jersey

  Victor Avers, Canoga Park, California

  Herman and Fran Begega, Pompton Lakes, New Jersey

  Jo Bertone, Dallas, Texas

  The late L. R. Boyd, Jr., Teague, Texas

  The late Col. James G. Chesnutt, The Presidio, San Francisco, California

  Grant Chorley, Vienna, Austria

  Eva Clegg, Greensboro, North Carolina

  Copycat, Feather and Ditto

  Angelita Correa, San Miguel de Allende, Gto., México

  Sonja Heinze Coryat, Santa Rosa, California

  Dino and
Martha De Laurentiis, Beverly Hills, California

  Henry P. Dickerson III, Staunton, Virginia

  Robert M. Elkins, Cincinnati, Ohio

  Hugo and Lorraine Gerstl, Carmel, California

  Robert Gleason, New York, New York

  Gus Heinze, Mill Valley, California

  Stephen de las Heras, New York, New York

  The late Les Hicks, Hicksville, Long Island, New York

  Bill and Shirley Jones, McGaheysville, Virginia

  Peter Kirsch, M.D., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  The late Elizabeth Lucas, Radford, Virginia

  The late A. Louis Ginsberg-Martin, Paterson, New Jersey

  Donna Marxer, New York, New York

  Melva Elizabeth Mann Newsom, Xenia, Ohio

  Raúl G. Oviedo, M.D., Elkton, Virginia

  Ernesto Pacheco, Dallas, Texas

  The late Vance Packard, Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts

  David and Phyllis Parker, Lexington, Virginia

  Robert Pastorio, Staunton, Virginia

  Sam Pinkus, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York

  Evva Pryor, New York, New York

  The late James Rutherfoord, Radford, Virginia

  Clark L. Savage, Monterey, California

  Joyce O. Servis, Caldwell, New Jersey

  The late Robert Shea, Glencoe, Illinois

  Lewis J. Singer, M.D., Lexington, Virginia

  Shirley Snyder, Harrisonburg, Virginia

  Gayle Tatarski, Reidsville, North Carolina

  Neil Thornton, Tawas City, Michigan

  Francesca Todaro, San Miguel de Allende, Gto., México

  Frank Vos, Stamford, Connecticut

  The late Edie Williams, San Francisco, California

  Eugene and Ina Winick, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York