War God: Return of the Plumed Serpent

by Graham Hancock

* * *

  Díaz cursed, ducked under his raised shield and hurriedly ran out of range as a new shower of rocks pelted down from the roof of the gate tower. Ten or fifteen men were visible up there, but the musketeers had already fired a volley and had been forced to pull back to reload.

  Because of the huge bulk of the great pyramid in the centre of the plaza, none of the four gateways were in the line of fire of the cannon on the balcony. Since the Spaniards’ lodgings stood on the east side of the plaza, however, the slaughter unleashed was fully visible from the east gate, and much of the devastation could also be seen across the corners of the pyramid from the north and south gates. Only the west gate, on the opposite side of the monument, was completely out of sight, and Díaz had known, when he’d elected to secure this gate, that the mob was likely to be less demoralised and put up more of a fight here. Even so, the mere sound of the cannon salvo, and the wails and screams that rose up immediately afterwards, had worked their magic, scattering most of the defenders, and the first volley from his five musketeers had killed or chased off the rest. Once the men on the tower were dealt with, resistance here would be over and his squad could keep the gate closed and barred, as they’d been ordered, until the grim work of killing in the plaza was done.

  The tower had an internal wooden stairway, also vulnerable to attack from above, that zigzagged to the roof in three flights. On a signal from the captain of the musketeers, Díaz yelled to his men, shuffled into rank between Mibiercas and La Serna as they raised their shields, locked the edges together with the shields of the rest of the squad and darted forward in a mass under a solid armoured carapace. Glancing up as he charged, Díaz saw that all the defenders on top of the tower had crowded forward near the edge of the flat roof, the better to push down heaps of stones and, in the process – these men knew nothing of guns! – had made themselves easy targets. As the barrage of falling rocks beat down on the shield carapace, he heard the crash of the second musket volley and screams from above. He knew the shooters had found their marks when tumbling bodies joined the avalanche, hit the shields with tremendous force and fell limp and dead to the ground.

  Then Díaz was inside the tower and taking the stairs three at a time, with Mibiercas ahead of him, La Serna behind and a dozen other men following. A few rocks came flying but they brushed them aside with their shields. Mibiercas gutted a screaming warrior who jabbed ineffectually at him with a spear on the second landing, and then, as they bounded up the final flight, they heard the tremendous percussion of the second cannon barrage, followed by some other, even louder and more ruinous sound, and burst out unopposed onto the roof to find the remaining defenders had cast aside their weapons and thrown themselves on their faces. The Spaniards fell upon them without mercy, quickly killing them all before they realised what had caused their abject surrender. Somehow Mesa had cranked up the elevation of one of the lombards sufficiently to fire a seventy-pound ball into the great temple perched on the flat top of the pyramid, and the projectile had clearly hit some crucial structural element, for it had brought half the edifice tumbling down amidst a thunder of collapsing masonry and a huge pall of dust that rapidly billowed out to fill the sky above the plaza like the smoke of hellfire.

  Looking down from the roof of the tower, Díaz saw his five musketeers with their backs to the gate, swords drawn, stabbing and hacking at a screaming, hysterical throng desperate only to escape the plaza. But they would not be allowed to escape. Not one of them. Cortés’s orders were quite specific on that point. ‘With me, men,’ Díaz yelled, as he led his squad down the stairs again at a run, soon reinforcing the musketeers at the gate and joining with them in the general slaughter. A troop of cavalry led by Cortés thundered round the southwest corner of the pyramid and charged the rear of the crowd with lances levelled. In the wake of the cavalry came a square of fifty infantry, their swords already steeped to the hilt in blood, driving further hordes of screaming refugees before them. Seeing the gates barred, some of those who fled climbed on one another’s shoulders in desperate efforts to scale the walls, where they made easy targets for the teams of snipers who’d begun to work their way methodically around the plaza.

  Díaz tasted the metallic tang of blood in his mouth as he killed and killed again, his face set, his sword arm already aching.

  * * *

  Deep beneath the great pyramid, Tozi heard the crash and roar of distant thunder and felt the cave floor shake. If these sounds were from the outside world, as they seemed to be, then they were the first to reach her since the start of her imprisonment here. ‘No,’ she said out loud, instinctively resisting the idea, her voice croaky and wavering, ‘No. I don’t think so.’

  There had, after all, been many strange visions, many encounters here in the dark, and all of them, every one, had proved to be false – so there was no reason why this should be any different.

  With a groan, she rolled onto her belly. She was so far gone in hunger and weakness now that she found it hard to stand. With great difficulty and low moans of pain, she got her hands and knees under her and began to crawl along her familiar track towards the wall. At last she found the trail of sour slime she was seeking and pressed her parched lips and tongue against it, lapping at the moisture.

  * * *

  Alvarado dismounted from Bucephalus, handed the reins to his groom and stalked off across the plaza on foot, swinging his falchion. He had enjoyed himself enormously, galloping around with the rest of the cavalry, running down the panicked and fleeing Cholulans, driving them up against the barred gates, killing thirty or more with his lance and watching many times that number trampled underfoot by their own compatriots in a dozen hysterical stampedes. What with the activities of the other cavaliers, the infantry running rampage with their swords and pikes, many volleys of musket fire, and the mass slaughter worked at the outset by the two salvos of grapeshot from the eight cannon on the balcony, the whole plaza was now so densely covered with fallen, broken, gutted Indians that he walked over nothing but bodies and heard nothing but the groans of the wounded and the dying.

  Alvarado made for a knot of twenty or so dazed Indians milling near the steps that ascended the east face of the great pyramid. Some of them were still armed, but they were so shocked and disoriented they didn’t look capable of using their primitive spears and native broadswords and, as they saw him approach with the huge falchion in his hand, they threw their weapons down. Fools and cowards! Better by far to fight, and sell their lives dearly, for not one of them would leave this place alive! Sprinting the last few paces, his mailed boots crunching over the skulls and throats of fallen men, Alvarado began coldly, systematically, precisely to cut the group of survivors down. None of them tried to come against him. They just stood there like dumb animals awaiting slaughter, as he chopped the heavy blade of the falchion into their unprotected heads and necks. Very few needed more than a single blow, but some he disdained to kill, hacking off their legs or arms instead and leaving them to die slowly of their injuries, screaming in agony. A few tried to run from him, fleeing up the steps of the pyramid; with a wild laugh, his armour dripping blood, Alvarado went after them.

  The steps were hurdled with fallen masonry from the ruined temple on the summit. Good shot there by Mesa! Alvarado thought as he hacked another fugitive to death. With a despairing wail, the next man turned and tried to grapple with him, but Alvarado slashed the falchion across his belly, left him holding his guts and steadily, remorselessly, continued his climb. By the time he reached the top he’d killed all the men he was pursuing and he wasn’t even breathing heavily. God, it felt good to be alive!

  He looked around the summit platform. Several hundred Indians had been up here at the beginning of the morning, but most now lay crushed under gigantic blocks where Mesa’s seventy-pound wrecking ball had torn the temple apart, and the rest, it seemed, had fled. However, the great structure was by no means completely flattened; large sections of it still stood and, where a dark corridor led into an intac
t wing, Alvarado saw a flicker of movement. He grinned and swung the falchion. Good! Still some murder to be done up here then.

  * * *

  The squads at the gates had done their work well: not one of the Indians who had come here, so puffed up with bravado and treachery that morning, had been allowed to escape. Blood flowed everywhere in rivers and pooled in lakes; thousands had died beneath the swords and spears of the conquistadors, and thousands more beneath the guns and in the resulting crush and panic. Sporadic bursts of musket fire could be heard as little groups of Indians who’d somehow survived until now were rounded up and finished off, and there were still pockets of resistance in some of the temples at the edges of the plaza but, rather than risk losing men storming these, Cortés had ordered great fires to be started. A dozen structures were already ablaze, sending up palls of acrid smoke; in some cases the defendants chose to remain inside and burn to death, while those who ran out screaming for mercy were butchered on the spot.

  Cortés dismounted and handed Molinero’s reins to Pepillo. Cortés had not allowed him to participate in this morning’s action, but he’d come down from the audience chamber to meet the caudillo. Despite the courage and fighting spirit he’d shown at the hill of Tzompach, the boy was white faced now at the sight of so much death. ‘You’re a good lad,’ Cortés said, tousling his hair with mailed fingers, ‘but you need to cultivate a stronger stomach – you and Malinal both.’

  ‘Malinal’s stomach’s strong enough,’ the boy said with a surprising hint of defiance. ‘The things she’s seen, the things she’s done. She’s fearless, sir, but she has a kind heart. No one can blame her for a kind heart.’

  Cortés nodded. No one could blame Malinal for her kind heart or deny her courage, he reflected, and Pepillo was right to remind him of this. ‘Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings,’ he said quietly, ‘hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou might still the enemy and the avenger.’

  ‘What’s that, sir?’ asked Pepillo.

  ‘Oh, nothing, lad, nothing. Take Molinero into the courtyard with the other horses, then go back to the audience chamber and guard Malinal well. She’s a precious jewel to us.’

  Pleased to see Pepillo was wearing the broadsword Escalante had given him, Cortés turned away from the boy and walked towards the steps of the great pyramid. All resistance there had ended when the temple had come crashing down; the summit platform, cleared of the foe, would provide an excellent vantage point to consider what should be done next. Pepillo’s horror had touched him more deeply than he would have thought possible, and he realised he was beginning to reconsider his original plan to sack the entire city and kill every man, woman and child left within it. There was much to be said for mercy and perhaps, after all, the slaughter in the plaza would suffice to punish Cholula’s treachery and send an unmistakable message to Moctezuma.

  ‘Surely goodness and mercy,’ Cortés recited as he climbed, ‘shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.’

  * * *

  The audience chamber – with Tlaqui and Tlalchi still lying bound on the floor, Melchior still chained in the corner and straining furiously at his leash – had been deserted by the gun crews. ‘Where’s everyone gone?’ Pepillo asked Malinal.

  ‘Out into the plaza,’ she answered, ‘to join the killing and looting. It seems these are activities your people excel at; even the Mexica are not so thorough.’ She walked to the balcony where the cannon stood silent and untended, and looked down on the heaps of bodies, the great pools and puddles of blood, the burning temples, and Spanish soldiers swarming everywhere, finishing off the wounded, going through clothing, helping themselves to the belongings of the dead. Pepillo joined her. ‘It makes me ashamed,’ he admitted.

  ‘Me also,’ Malinal agreed.

  ‘The caudillo believes violence now will prevent more violence later,’ said Pepillo.

  ‘Then let’s hope he’s right. Tenochtitlan is a much larger city than Cholula. Twenty times larger, twenty times more people, twenty times better defended, but if we have to fight to seize it, I fear there will be a hundred times more deaths.’

  Malinal’s mind was in turmoil. Never until now had her determination to end Moctezuma’s rule wavered, but looking down at the slaughter and devastation in the plaza, she wondered for the first time if she was doing the right thing. Still, despite it all, she knew she loved the great caudillo and continued to believe he was a good man sent to do the work of the god of peace.

  Behind, in the audience chamber, Tlaqui groaned. ‘Release us, kind lady,’ he said. ‘We are in pain.’

  ‘Release us we beg you,’ echoed Tlalchi, ‘while none of the white demons are here. Let us flee this place. We know a way to escape.’

  ‘We can’t let them go,’ said Pepillo.

  Though he preferred to speak to her in Spanish, she’d seen the boy’s grasp of Nahuatl improve enormously in recent months. ‘They will be tortured,’ she replied.

  ‘Not if they tell the caudillo what he wants to know.’

  ‘Even if they do, I still think he’ll torture them. If they were just enemies, it wouldn’t be so bad, but they lied to him, betrayed him. He never forgives betrayal.’ She paused, tilted her head to one side. ‘Did you hear that?’ she asked.

  Pepillo wrinkled his brow: ‘What?’

  ‘That. Listen.’

  Then they both heard the sound – the stealthy tread of bare feet on the stairs, not coming up from the plaza or the courtyard, but descending from the floor above.

  That floor gave access to the roof and there were no Spaniards there. ‘Quick,’ said Malinal, grabbing Pepillo’s arm and running for the door. ‘We have to get out of here.’

  He shook her off and ran to unchain Melchior.

  * * *

  Alvarado was hunting a man, an elusive man, a cunning man, perhaps even a dangerous man, who ran and dodged and doubled back almost soundlessly through the labyrinth of chambers and passageways in the largely intact western wing of the gigantic ruined temple.

  Even here, parts of the roof had collapsed, leaving some areas in complete darkness, while in others brilliant shafts of light pierced the gloom, revealing swirling clouds of suspended dust.

  And much else.

  In one long, narrow room, stinking of blood and incense, he found four hundred human heads threaded like abacus beads onto poles that penetrated them from ear to ear, and were fixed in orderly racks lining the walls. Pausing to examine the grisly trophies, Alvarado saw they had all been taken from young Indian men, some freshly butchered with the flesh and features still intact, some in such an advanced state of decomposition they must have been killed weeks before. Involuntarily his fingers tightened round the hilt of the falchion. He was not afraid. He was never afraid. But he had to admit to a certain sense of unease at the aura of evil filling this charnel house of the demon.

  As he advanced towards the narrow doorway leading into the next room, a slither in the dust and a rapid, receding pad, pad, pad of bare feet told him his prey had been waiting silently there, no doubt hoping he’d give up the chase. Hope on, dear boy, Alvarado thought, increasing his speed, but I will have your head and mount it on a spear if it takes me all day. He was at a full run, pounding along a narrow corridor spanned by a low corbel vault, leaving the faint ghostly light of the chamber of skulls behind, plunging on into absolute darkness. He burst through into some larger chamber, almost blind now, and suddenly he heard a feral screech – something between a shriek and a roar that made the hair on his arms stand on end – as he was hit from behind by a snarling, powerful, muscled weight that felt like a man and yet not a man and exuded a rank animal stench and raked the steel of his cuirass with long, curved claws.

  Instinct took over and Alvarado jabbed back viciously with his right elbow, caught his attacker full in the face, hearing some bone break, and simultaneously swivelled and lashed out with the falchion in a long curving sweep, shouting
with battle joy ‘Yes!’ as the blade bit solidly into flesh and elicited a long, keening yowl of pain and fury. Something sharp – knife, claw, fang, he did not know – slashed along his left upper arm, cleaving the unprotected muscle (for he’d scorned wearing rerebraces today), but again his response was instant, a punching blow with the tip of the falchion that made another solid hit and drove the creature off.

  Alvarado raced after it through the darkness, guided by sound alone, bleeding freely from his gashed arm and not caring, the need to kill so strong on him it ached like hunger.

  * * *

  Cortés reached the top of the eastern stairway. Ahead of him the granite idol of Hummingbird, squat and ugly, all tusks and fangs, had been thrown on its side, crushing three men, a great crack splitting its monstrous reptilian features. Beyond it the eastern wing of the temple brought down by Mesa’s cannonball had been reduced to great chunks of rubble that lay scattered and piled everywhere, as though by an earthquake, upon more of the pulverised dead.

  Cortés turned and looked down. An ocean of tumbled, bloody corpses stretched away from the base of the pyramid to the edge of the plaza, where the two tall lodging houses of the Spaniards were joined to the palace of Tlaqui and Tlalchi under a shared flat roof, the rear elevations of the three buildings towering above the massive enclosure wall surrounding the whole plaza. Cortés saw the cannon, the two great lombards, the six falconets, lined up on the balcony of the Spanish quarters, and tut-tutted that they appeared to have been left untended while their crews roamed amongst the dead, looting at will. Neither Malinal nor Pepillo were on the balcony, but he thought he saw movement inside the audience chamber, so that was where they must be – no doubt keeping guard on Tlaqui and Tlalchi, who he intended to put to torture very soon. Once their feet were basted with oil and held in a fire they would have much to tell him about Moctezuma’s part in what had been planned here at Cholula.