Aztec Autumn

by Gary Jennings

  I purposely delayed departing from that place until the four newcome soldiers had gone galloping on toward Compostela. Then I bade farewell to Esteban and Teniente Tallabuena, and they and all their troop—except the three white heroes and the Lying Monk—cordially waved me off. When Tiptoe and I rode on, leading our two extra horses, I turned us slightly northward from the direction the soldiers had gone, in what I hoped was the direction of Aztlan.

  XVII

  NOT MANY DAYS later, we were among mountains that I recognized from the journey with my mother and uncle. It was still early in the rainy season, but on the day we reached the easternmost bounds of the lands ruled by Aztlan, the god Tlaloc and his attendant tlalóque spirits were amusing themselves by making a storm. They jabbed down from the skies their forked sticks of lightning and thunderously shattered their immense water jars to pour rain down on the earth. Through that curtain of rain, I espied the glow of a campfire on a hillside not far ahead of us. I halted our little train among some concealing trees and waited for a flare of lightning to show me more. When it did, I counted five men, standing or crouching around a fire sheltered by a lean-to made of leafy branches. The men all appeared to be wearing the quilted-cotton armor of Aztéca warriors, and seemed almost as if they had been put there to await our coming. If they were, I thought, this was a matter of some puzzlement, for how could anyone of Aztlan have known of our approach?

  “Wait here, Tiptoe, with the horses,” I said. “Let me make sure these are men of my people. Be prepared to turn and flee, if I signal that they are hostile.”

  I strode alone out into the downpour and up the hillside. As I neared the group, I raised both hands to show that I was without any weapon, and called, “Mixpantzánco!”

  “Ximopanólti!” came the reply, sociably enough, and in the familiar accent of old Aztlan, good to hear again.

  Another few steps and I was close enough to see—by the next lightning flash—the man who had replied. A familiar face from old Aztlan, but not one very pleasing to encounter again, because I well remembered what he was like. I imagine my voice reflected that, when I greeted him without much enthusiasm, “Ayyo, Cousin Yeyac.”

  “Yéyactzin,” he haughtily reminded me. “Ayyo, Tenamáxtli. We have been expecting you.”

  “So it would seem,” I said, glancing around at the four other warriors, all armed with obsidian-edged maqudhuime. I supposed they were his current cuilóntin lovers, but I did not remark on that. I said only, “How did you know I was coming?”

  “I have my ways of knowing,” said Yeyac, and a roll of thunder accompanying his words made them sound ominous. “Of course, I had no idea it was my own beloved cousin coming home, but the description was close enough, I see now.”

  I smiled, though I was not in a mood for smiling. “Has our great-grandfather again been exercising his talent for far-seeing, then?”

  “Old Canaútli is long dead.” To that announcement the tlalóque added another deafening smashing of water jars. When Yeyac could be heard, he demanded, “Now, where is the rest of your party? Your slave and the Spaniards’ army horses?”

  I was getting more and more disturbed. If Yeyac was not being advised by some Aztécatl far-seer, who was keeping him so well informed? I took note that he spoke of “Spaniards,” not using the word Caxtiltéca that had formerly been Aztlan’s name for the white men. And I remembered how, just recently, I had been made uneasy when I learned that the Governor Guzmán had set his province’s capital city so close to ours.

  “I am sorry to hear of great-grandfather’s death,” I said levelly. “And I am sorry, Cousin Yeyac, but I will report only to our Uey-Tecútli Mixtzin, not to you or any other lesser person. And I have much to report.”

  “Then report it here and now!” he barked. “I, Yéyactzin, am the Uey-Tecútli of Aztlan!”

  “You? Impossible!” I blurted.

  “My father and your mother never returned here, Tenamáxtli.” I made some involuntary movement at that, and Yeyac added, “I regret having so many grievous tidings to impart”—but his eyes shifted away from mine. “Word came to us that Mixtzin and Cuicáni were found slain, apparently by bandits on the road.”

  This was desolating to hear. But if it was true that my uncle and mother were dead, I knew from Yeyac’s manner that they had not died at the hands of any strangers. More lightning flashes and thunder roars and lashings of rain gave me time to compose myself, then I said:

  “What of your sister and her husband—what was his name?—Káuri, yes. Mixtzin appointed them to rule in his stead.”

  “Ayya, the weakling Káuri,” Yeyac sneered. “No warrior ruler, he. Not even a deft hunter. One day in these mountains he wounded a bear in the chase, and foolishly pursued it. The bear of course turned and dismembered him. The widow Améyatzin was content to retire to matronly pastimes and have me take on the burden of governing.”

  I knew that, too, to be untrue, because I knew Cousin Améyatl even better than I knew Yeyac. She would never willingly have yielded her position even to a real man, let alone this contemptible simulacrum whom she had always derided and despised.

  “Enough of this dallying, Tenamáxtli!” Yeyac snarled. “You will obey me!”

  “I will? Just as you obey the white Governor Guzmán?”

  “No longer,” he said, unthinking. “The new governor, Corona-do—”

  He shut his mouth, but too late. I knew all I needed to know. Those four Spanish riders had arrived in Compostela to arrest Guzmán, and they had mentioned meeting me and Tiptoe on their way. Perhaps, by then, they had begun to wonder about the legitimacy of my churchly “mission,” and made their suspicions known. Whether Yeyac had been there in Compostela, or had heard the word later, no matter. He was clearly in league with the white men. What else this might mean—whether all of Aztlan and its native Aztéca and resident Mexíca had similarly donned the Spanish yoke—I would find out in good time. Right now, I had to contend only with Yeyac. In the next lull of the storm’s commotion, I said warningly:

  “Take care, man of no manhood.” And I reached for the steel knife at my waist. “I am no longer the untried younger cousin you remember. Since we parted, I have killed—”

  “No manhood?” he bellowed. “I too have killed! Would you be my next?”

  His face was contorted with rage as he raised high his heavy maquáhuitl and stepped toward me. His four companions did the same, right behind him, and I backed away, wishing I had brought with me some weapon more formidable than a knife. But suddenly, all those menacing black blades of obsidian turned to glittering silver, because Tlaloc’s lightning forks began to jab and jab and jab in rapid sequence, close about the six of us. I was not expecting the thing that happened next, though I was gratified and not very much surprised when it did happen. Yeyac took another step, but backward this time, reeling, and his mouth opened wide in a cry that went unheard in the immediately succeeding tumult of thunder, and he dropped his sword and fell heavily on his back with a great splash of mud.

  There was no need for me to fend off his four underlings. They all stood immobile, maqudhuime lifted and streaming rainwater, as if the lightning had petrified them in that position. Their mouths were as wide open as Yeyac’s, but in astonishment, awe and fright. They could not have seen, as I had, the bright, wet, red hole that had opened in the cotton quilting of Yeyac’s belly armor, and none of us had heard the sound of the arcabuz that had done that. The four cuilóntin could only have assumed that I had, by some magic, called down upon their leader the forked sticks of Tlaloc. I gave them no time to think otherwise, but bawled, “Down weapons!”

  They instantly and meekly lowered their blades. Such creatures, I surmised, must be like the frailest of women—easily cowed when they hear a real man’s voice of command.

  “This vile pretender is dead,” I told them, giving the body a disdainful kick—I did that only to heave Yeyac over onto his face, so that they should not see the hole in his front and the bloodstain spre
ading from it. “I regret that I had to invoke the gods’ assistance so suddenly. There were questions I would have asked. But the wretch gave me no choice.” The four stared glumly at the corpse, and took no heed when I made a beckoning gesture back toward the trees, to summon Tiptoe forward. “Now,” I went on, “you warriors will take orders from me. I am Tenamáxtzin, nephew of the late Lord Mixtzin, hence, by right of succession, from this moment on, the Uey-Tecútli of Aztlan.”

  But I could think of no order to give them, except to say, “Wait here for me.” Then I sloshed back through the rain to intercept Tiptoe, as she came leading all our horses. I intended to tell her, before she joined us, to hide the arcabuz that she had so timely and so accurately employed. But when I got close, I saw that she had already prudently stowed it away again, so I said only, “Well done, Pakápeti.”

  “I was not too impetuous, then?” She had regarded my approach with some anxiety in her face, but now she smiled. “I was afraid you might scold me. But I did think that this one, too, was a beast attacking you.”

  “This time you were right. And you did splendidly. At such a distance, in such poor light—your skill is enviable.”

  “Yes,” she agreed, with what I thought rather unwomanly satisfaction. “I have killed a man.”

  “Well, not much of a man.”

  “I would have done my best to kill the others, too, if you had not waved to me.”

  “They are of even less account. Save your man-hatred, my dear, until you can start killing enemies really worth the killing.”

  The sky’s tlalóque were lustily continuing their clamor and downpour as I commanded the four warriors to sling Yeyac’s cadaver across one of my packhorses—thus he was still facedown, the wound in his front invisible. Next, I ordered the four to accompany me as I rode, two each on either side of my horse; Tiptoe brought up the rear of the train as we proceeded onward. When there came a pause in the thunder rumblings, I leaned down from my saddle and said to the man trudging alongside my left stirrup:

  “Give me your maquáhuitl.” He meekly handed it up to me and I said, “You heard what Yeyac told me—of the several convenient deaths that so fortuitously promoted him to Uey-Tecútli of Aztlan. How much of what he said was true?”

  The man coughed and temporized, “Your greatgrandfather, our Rememberer of History, died of old age, as all men must, if they live to be old.”

  “I accept that,” I said, “but it has nothing to do with Yeyac’s marvelous quick elevation to the status of Revered Governor. I accept also that all men must die, but—I warn you—some must the sooner than others. What of those other deaths? Of Mixtzin and Cuicántzin and Káuritzin?”

  “It was just as Yeyac told you,” the man said, but his eyes shifted just as Yeyac’s had done. “Your uncle and mother were set upon by bandits—”

  He got no further. With a backhanded swipe of his own obsidian sword, I took his head off his shoulders, and both pieces of him toppled into a rain-running ditch beside the trail. In the next interval between thunderings, I spoke to the warrior at the other side of my saddle, who was goggling fearfully up at me like a frog about to be stepped on.

  “As I said, some men must the sooner than others. And I do dislike to invoke the aid of Tlaloc, who is presently being very busy with this storm, when I can kill as easily myself.” As if Tlaloc had heard me, the storm began to abate. “Now, what have you to tell me?”

  The man stuttered for a moment, but finally said, “Yeyac lied, and so did Quani.” He gestured back at the pieces in the ditch behind us. “Yéyactzin posted lookouts around the far outskirts of Aztlan, there to wait patiently to espy the return of Mixtzin and his sister—and yourself—from that journey to Tenochtítlan. When the two did return … well… there was an ambush awaiting them.”

  “That ambush,” I said, “of whom did it consist?”

  “Yeyac, of course. And his most favored favorite, Quani. The warrior you just now have slain. You are fully avenged, Tenamdxtzin.”

  “I doubt that,” I said. “No two men of this One World, even striking cowardly from ambush, could have overwhelmed my uncle Mixtzin.” And I slashed again with the maquahuitl. Separately, the man’s head flew and his body slumped into the sodden brush on that side of the trail. I turned again, and spoke to the remaining warrior walking on my left.

  “I am still waiting to hear the truth. As you must have noticed, I do not wait long.”

  This one, almost babbling in his terror, assured me, “The truth, my lord, I kiss the earth to it. We were all guilty. Yeyac and we four laid the ambush. It was all of us together who fell upon your uncle and mother.”

  “And what of Kauri, the co-regent?”

  “Not he nor anyone else in Aztlan knew the fate of Mixtzin and Cuicántzin. We cajoled Káuritzin into joining us on a bear hunt in the mountains. He did indeed, by himself and most manfully, spear and slay a bear. But we, in turn, killed Káuri, then employed the dead animal’s teeth and claws to maul and tear at him. When we took his body and the bear’s carcass he ne, his widow, your cousin Améyatzin, could hardly dispute our story that the beast had been responsible for his death.”

  “And then? Did you dastardly traitors kill her, as well?”

  “No, no, my lord. She lives, I kiss the earth to that. But in seclusion now, no longer regent.”

  “Why? She would still have been expecting her father to return and resume his proper place. Why would she have abdicated her regency?”

  “Who can say, my lord? Out of grief at her widowhood, perhaps? Out of deep mourning?”

  “Nonsense!” I snapped. “If the deeps of Míctlan’s oblivion yawned before her, Améyatzin would never shirk her duty. How did you make her do it? Torture? Rape? What?”

  “Only Yeyac could tell you that. It was he alone who persuaded her. And you have put him beyond the telling. One thing, though, I can tell you.” He said most haughtily, and with a fastidious sniff, “My lord Yéyactzin would never have sullied himself by raping or otherwise toying with the body of a mere female.”

  That remark infuriated me more than had all his comrades’ lies, and my third slash of the obsidian sword cleft him from shoulder to belly.

  On my other side, the sole surviving warrior had prudently sidled out of reach of my weapon, but he was also prudently eyeing the no-longer-raining but still ominously dark sky.

  “You are wise not to run,” I told him. “Tlaloc’s forks are much longer than my arm. But be at ease. I am sparing you, for a time, at least And for a reason.”

  “Reason?” he croaked. “What reason, my lord?”

  “I wish you to tell me of everything that has occurred in Aztlan in the years since I left there.”

  “Ayyo, every least thing, my lord!” he said eagerly. “I kiss the earth to it. How shall I begin?”

  “I already know that Yeyac befriended and colluded with the white men. So tell me first: are there any Spaniards in our city or its outer domains?”

  “None, my lord, not anywhere in the Aztlan lands. Yeyac and we of his personal guard have frequently visited Compostela, true, but no white men have come north from there. The Spanish governor gave oath that Yeyac could continue his rule of Aztlan, undisputed, on only one single condition. That Yeyac bar any native marauders from making forays into the governor’s lands.”

  “In other words,” I said, “Yeyac was prepared to fight his own people of The One World on behalf of the white men. Did that ever come to pass?”

  “Yes,” said the warrior, trying to look unhappy about it. “On two or three occasions, Yeyac led troops whose loyalty to him personally was unwavering, and they… well… discouraged this or that small band of malcontents marching southward to make trouble for the Spaniards.”

  “When you say loyal troops, it sounds as if not all the warriors and inhabitants of Aztlan have been overjoyed to have Yeyac as their Uey-Tecútli.”

  “That is so. Most of the Aztéca—and Mexíca, too—much preferred to be ruled by Améyatzin an
d her consort. They were dismayed when the Lady Améyatl was deposed from her regency. They would, of course, be even better pleased to have Mixtzin back again. And they still expect his return, even after these many years.”

  “Do the people know of Yeyac’s treacherous pact with the Spanish governor?”

  “Very few know of it. Not even the elders of the Speaking Council. It is known only to us of Yeyac’s personal guard, and those loyal troops of whom I spoke. And his closest, best-trusted adviser, a certain person newcome to these parts. But the people have accepted Yeyac’s rule, if only grudgingly, because he claimed that he, and he only, could prevent an invasion of the white men. That, he has done. No resident of Aztlan has yet seen a Spaniard. Or a horse,” the man added, glancing at mine.

  “Meaning,” I mused, “that Yeyac’s keeping the Spanish free of molestation gives them time to increase their forces and weaponry unimpeded, until they are ready to come. Which they will. But wait—you spoke of a certain person giving advice to Yeyac. Who would that be?”

  “Did I say a person, my lewd? I should have said a woman.”

  “A woman?! Your late companion just now made it plain that Yeyac had no use for women in any capacity, even as victims.”

  “And this one has no use for men, I gather, though a man who favors women would probably find her most comely and personable. But she is truly sagacious in the arts of governing and strategy and expediency. That is why Yeyac willingly gave ear to her every counsel. It was at her urging that he originally made embassy to the Spanish governor. When we got word of your approach, I daresay she would have come with us to intercept you, except that she has charge of keeping your cousin Améyatl in close confinement.”