Aztec Autumn

by Gary Jennings

  “Believe me or do not, as you will. But insofar as she can be to any male person, G’nda Ké is your friend.”

  “May all the gods be with me,” I muttered, “whenever you become otherwise.”

  “Come, set G’nda Ké a task of trust. See if she performs it to your satisfaction.”

  “I have already set you two. Dispose of every domestic now serving in this palace. Seek and summon those loyal ones who departed. Here is another. Send swift-messengers to the homes of all the members of the Speaking Council—Aztlan, Tépiz, Yakóreke, and elsewhere—bidding them convene in the throne room here at midday tomorrow.”

  “It shall be done.”

  “In the meantime, while I do my winnowing of that army outside, you stay indoors and out of their sight. There will be many men in that square who will wonder why I did not kill you first of all.”

  Downstairs, Pakápeti was waiting to inform me that Améyatl was clean, fresh and perfumed, that she had eaten ravenously and finally was sleeping the sleep of the long-exhausted.

  “Thank you, Tiptoe,” I said. “Now, I would like you to stand with me while I review all those warriors out yonder. Nochéztli is supposed to mark for me the ones I should get rid of. But I do not know how well I can depend on him. He may take this chance to settle old grudges of his own—superiors who denied him promotion, perhaps, or former cuilóntin lovers who discarded him. Before I make pronouncement in each case, I may ask you for a woman’s softer-hearted opinion.”

  We crossed the courtyard, where those field slaves were still minding the horses but not looking much more comfortable in that job, and stopped at the open portal of the wall, where Nochéztli waited for us. Some ten paces distant from the wall, the rest of the square was packed with the ranks and files of the warriors, all in fighting garb but unarmed, and every fifth man holding a torch so that I could see every individual face. Here and there, one held aloft the banner of a particular knight’s company, or the smaller guidon of a lesser troop led by a cuachic, an “old eagle.” I believe the city’s army there before me totaled about one thousand men.

  “Warriors—stand tall!” Nochéztli roared, as if he had been commanding troops all his life. The few men who had been slumping or fidgeting instantly stiffened erect, Nochéztli boomed again, “Hark to the words of your Uey-Tecútli Tenamáxtzin!”

  Whether obediently or apprehensively, the crowd of men was so silent that I did not have to shout. “You were summoned to assembly by my order. Also by my order, the Tequíua Nochéztli here will now go up and down your lines and touch the shoulder of certain men. Each of those will step forward from the ranks and stand against this wall. There will be no dawdling, no remonstrance, no questions, no sound until I speak again.”

  Nochéztli’s process of selection took such a long while that I will not recount it step by step and man by man. But when he had finished with the last, farthermost line of warriors, I counted one hundred thirty and eight standing along the wall, looking variously unhappy, ashamed or defiant. They ranged from rankless yaoquízquin recruits upward through the ranks of íyactin and tequíuatin to the cuéchictin under-officers. I myself was ashamed to see that all the accused miscreants were Aztéca. Among them was not a one of the old Mexíca warriors who had long ago come from Tenochtítlan to train this army, nor were there any younger Mexíca who might have been the sons of those proud men.

  The highest-ranking officer against the wall was a single Aztécatl knight, but he was only of the Arrow order. The Jaguar and Eagle orders confer their knighthood on true heroes, warriors who have distinguished themselves in many battles and have slain enemy knights. The Arrow Knights are honored merely because they have become skilled at wielding the notoriously inaccurate bow and arrow, whether or not they have felled many enemies with those weapons.

  “All of you know why you stand here,” I said to the men at the wall, and loudly enough for the rest of the troops to hear. “You are accused of having sided with the unrightfully Revered Governor Yeyac, though all of you knew that he seized that false title by assassinating his own father and affinal brother. You followed Yeyac when he made alliance with the white men, our One World’s conquerors and oppressors. Pandering to those Spaniards, you fought with Yeyac against brave men of your own race, to stop their resisting the oppressors. Do any of you deny these allegations?”

  To their credit, none of them did. That was to Nochéztli’s credit, as well; obviously he had acted honestly in singling out the collaborators. I asked another question:

  “Do any of you plead any circumstance that might mitigate your guilt?”

  Five or six of them did step forward, at that, but each of them could say only words to this effect: “When I took the army oath, my lord, I swore to obey the orders of my superiors, and that is what I did.”

  “You swore oath to the army,” I said, “not to any individuals whom you knew to be acting against the army’s interests. Yonder stand some nine hundred other warriors, your comrades, who did not let themselves be led into treachery.” I turned to Tiptoe, and quietly asked her, “Does your heart feel compassion toward any of these deluded wretches?”

  “Toward none,” she said firmly. “Back in Michihuácan, when we Purémpecha had the rule of it, such men would have been staked out on the ground—and left there until they became so weak that the scavenger vultures did not even have to wait for them to the before beginning to eat them. I would suggest you do the same to all of these, Tenamáxtli.”

  By Huitzli, I thought, Pakápeti had become as bloodthirsty as G’nda Ké. I spoke again aloud, to be heard by all, though I addressed the men accused:

  “I have known two women who were more manly warriors than any of you. Here beside me stands one of them, who would merit knighthood if she were not a female. The other brave woman died in the act of destroying an entire fortress full of Spanish soldiers. You, by contrast, are a disgrace to your comrades, to your battle flags, to your oath, to us Aztéca and every other people of The One World. I condemn you, without exception, to death. But I will, in mercy, let you each decide on the manner of your dying.”

  Tiptoe made a murmur of indignant protest

  “You may choose one of three endings to your lives. One would be your sacrifice tomorrow on the altar of Aztlan’s patrón goddess, Coyolxaúqui. Since you would be going not of your own free will, that public execution would shame all your family and descendants to the end of time. Your houses, property and possessions will be confiscated, leaving those families in destitution as well as shame.”

  I paused, to let them think about that.

  “Or I will accept your word of honor—what little honor you may have retained—that each of you will go from here to your home, prop the point of your javelin against your chest and lean onto it, thus dying at the hand of a warrior, though it be your own hand.”

  Most of the men nodded at that, if somberly, but a few still waited to hear my third suggestion.

  “Or you may choose another, even more honorable means of self-sacrifice to the gods. You may volunteer for a mission I have planned. And”—I said with scorn—“it will mean your turning against your friends, the Spaniards. Not a man of you will survive this mission, I kiss the earth to that. But you will the in battle, as every warrior hopes to do. And to the gratification of all our gods, you will have spilled enemy blood as well as your own. I doubt that the gods will be mollified enough to grant you the warriors’ happy afterlife in Tonatíucan. But even in the drear nothingness of Míctlan, you can spend eternity remembering that, at least once in your days, you behaved like men. How many of you will volunteer?”

  They all did, to a man, stooping in the tlalqualíztli gesture to touch the earth, signifying that they kissed it in fealty to me.

  “So be it,” I said. “And you, Arrow Knight, I appoint to lead that mission when the time comes. Until then, all of you will be imprisoned in the temple of Coyolxaúqui, under guard. For now, speak your names to the Tequíua Nochéztli, that a sc
ribe may record them for me.”

  To the men still in the square, I called out, “I thank the rest of you—not least, for your unswerving loyalty to Aztlan. You are dismissed until I again call assembly.”

  As Tiptoe and I reentered the palace courtyard, she chided me, “Tenamáxtli, until this very evening, you slew men as abruptly and uncaringly as I would do. But then you put on that headdress and cloak and bangles—and, with them, an unbecoming mood of leniency. A Revered Governor should be more fierce than ordinary men, not less. These traitors deserved to die.”

  “And they will,” I assured her. “But in a way that furthers my cause.”

  “Executing them here, and publicly, would help your cause, too. It would deter all other men from trying any future duplicity. If Butterfly and her troop of women were here to do the executing by, say, slitting open those men’s bellies—carefully, not fatally—and then pouring fire ants inside, certainly no onlooker would ever risk incurring your wrath again.”

  I sighed. “Have you not looked upon enough dying already, Pakápeti? Then look yonder.” And I pointed. At the distant rear of the palace’s main building, in the area of the kitchens, a line of slaves was emerging from a lighted doorway, each bent under the weight of a body he was carrying off into the darkness. “On my order, and at one stroke, so to speak, the Yaki woman has slain every servant employed in this palace.”

  “And you did not even allow me to assist in that!” Tiptoe said angrily.

  I sighed again. “Tomorrow, my dear, Nochéztli will be listing for me the local citizens who—like the warriors—abetted Yeyac’s crimes or benefited from them. If you promise to cease nagging at me, I promise to let you practice your delicate feminine arts on two or three of those.”

  She smiled. “Now, that is more like the old Tenamáxtli. However, it will not satisfy me entirely. I want you also to promise that I may go along with the Arrow Knight and the others on that mission you propose, whatever it is.”

  “Girl, have you gone tlahuéle? That will be a suicidal mission! I know you enjoy killing men. But dying with them…?”

  She said loftily, “A woman is not obliged to explain her every whim and fancy.”

  “I am not asking that you explain this one. I am commanding that you forget it!” And I strode away from her, into the palace and up the stairs.

  I was seated at Améyatl’s bedside—I had been keeping vigil there all night—when finally in late morning she opened her eyes.

  “Ayyo!” she exclaimed. “It is you, cousin! I feared I had only dreamed that I had been rescued.”

  “You have been. And happy I am that I came in time, before you wasted entirely away in that fetid cell.”

  “Ayya!” she said now. “Turn aside your gaze, Tenamáxtli. I must look like the skeletal Weeping Woman of the old legends.”

  “To me, beloved cousin, you look as you ever did, even when you were a girl-child all knees and elbows. Pleasing to my eye and to my heart. You will soon be your former self again, beautiful and strong. You need only nourishment and rest.”

  She said urgently, “My father, your mother, did they come with you? Why were you all so long away?”

  “I regret being the one to tell you, Améyatl. They are not with me. They will never be with us again.”

  She gave a small cry of dismay.

  “I also regret having to tell you that it was your brother’s doing. He secretly slew them both—and later slew your husband Kauri as well—long before he imprisoned you and supplanted you as ruler of Aztlan.”

  She pondered this for a while in silence, and wept a little, and at last said, “He did such horrible deeds … and for only a paltry little eminence … in a negligible little corner of The One World. Poor Yeyac.”

  “Poor Yeyac?!”

  “You and I both knew, from our childhood, that Yeyac was born with an inauspicious tonáli. It has made him suffer unhappiness and dissatisfaction all his life.”

  “You are far more tolerant and forgiving than I, Améyatl. I do not regret telling you that Yeyac suffers no longer. He is dead, and I am responsible for his death. I hope you will not hold me hateful on that account.”

  “No… no, of course not” She reached for my hand and squeezed it affectionately. “It must have been ordained by the gods who cursed him with that tonáli. But now”—she visibly braced herself—“have you imparted all the bad news?”

  “You must judge of that yourself. I am in the process of ridding Aztlan of all Yeyac’s confederates and confidants.”

  “Banishing them?”

  “Far, far away. To Míctlan, I trust.”

  “Oh. I understand.”

  “All of them, anyway, except the woman G’nda Ké, who was warder of your prison cell.”

  “I know not what to make of that one,” said Améyatl, sounding perplexed. “I can hardly hate her. She had to obey Yeyac’s orders, but sometimes she would contrive to bring me bits of food more tasty than atóli, or a perfumed cloth with which I could wash myself a little. But something… her name…”

  “Yes. You and I are probably the only two who would even dimly recognize that name, now that my greatgrandfather is dead. It was he, Canaütli, who told us about the long-ago Yaki woman. Do you recall? We were children then.”

  “Yes!” said Améyatl. “The evil woman who sundered the Aztéca—and led half of them away to become the all-conquering Mexíca! But, Tenamáxtli, that was back at the beginning of time. This cannot be the same G’nda Ké!”

  “If not,” I growled, “she has certainly inherited all the base instincts and motives of her namesake ancestress.”

  “I wonder,” said Améyatl, “did Yeyac realize this? He heard Canaútli’s account at the same time we did.”

  “We will never know. And I have not yet inquired whether Canaútli has been succeeded by another Rememberer of History—or whether Canaútli passed on that story to his successor. I am inclined to think not Surely that new Rememberer would have incited the people of Aztlan to rise up in outrage, once the woman joined Yeyac’s court. Especially when she inveigled Yeyac into offering his friendship to the Spaniards.”

  “Yeyac did that?” gasped Améyatl, appalled. “But… then … why are you sparing the woman?”

  “I have need of her. I will tell you why, but it is a long story. And—ah!—here is Pakápeti, my faithful companion on the long way hither, and now your handmaiden.”

  Tiptoe had arrived with a platter of light viands—fruits and such—for Améyatl’s breaking of her fast. The two young women greeted one another amiably, but then Tiptoe, realizing that my cousin and I were in serious converse, left us to it.

  “Tiptoe is more than your personal servant,” I said. “She is chamberlain of this whole palace. She is also the cook, the laundress, the housekeeper, everything. She and you and I and the Yaki woman are the only persons still resident here. All the domestics who served under Yeyac have joined him in Míctlan. G’nda Ké is at present seeking replacements.”

  “You were about to tell me why G’nda Ké still lives, when so many others do not.”

  So, while Améyatl dined, with good appetite and obvious pleasure, I recounted all—or most—of my doings and ad-venturings since our parting. I touched only lightly on some of the occurrences. For instance, I did not describe in all its gruesome detail the burning of the man who I later learned had been my father—and whose death had impelled me to do so many of the things I did afterward. Also I condensed the telling of my education in the Spanish language and the Christian superstitions and my learning how to make a working thunder-stick. Also I did not dwell on my brief carnal connection with the mulata girl Rebeca, or the deep devotion that the late Citláli and I had shared, or the various Purémpe women (and one boy) I had sampled before I met Pakápeti, and I made it clear that she and I had for quite a long time now been no more than fellow travelers.

  But I did tell Améyatl, in painstaking detail, the plans—and the so-far few preparations—I had made for le
ading an insurrection against the white men that would drive them utterly out of The One World. When I had done, she said pensively:

  “You were ever valiant and ambitious, cousin. But this sounds like a vainglorious dream. The entire mighty Mexíca nation collapsed at the onslaught of the Caxtiltéca—or the Spaniards, as you call them. Yet you believe that you alone—”

  “Your own august father Mixtzin said that very thing, among the last words he ever spoke to me. But I am not alone. Not every nation succumbed as did the Mexíca. Or as Yeyac would have had Aztlan do. The Purémpecha fought so nearly to the last man that the land of Michihuácan is now almost entirely populated by women. And even they will-fight. Pakápeti rallied a goodly troop of them before she and I left there. And the Spaniards have not yet dared engage the fierce nations of the north. All that is required is someone to lead those disparate diehard peoples in a concerted effort. I know of no one else vainglorious enough to do that. So—if not I—who?”

  “Well…” said Améyatl. “If sheer determination counts for anything in such an enterprise … But you still have not explained why the alien G’nda Ké has any part in this.”

  “I want her to help me recruit those nations and tribes as yet unconquered but not yet organized into a cohesive force. That long-ago Yaki woman undeniably did inspire a ragtag rabble of outcast Aztéca to a belligerence that led, in time, to the most splendid civilization in The One World. If she could do that, so, I think, might her many-times-great-granddaughter—or whoever our G’nda Ké is. I will be satisfied if she can recruit for me only her own native Yaki nation. They are said to be the most savage fighters of all.”

  “As you deem best, cousin. You are the Uey-Tecútli.”

  “I meant to speak of that, too. I assumed the mantle only because you, being a female, cannot. But I have not yet Yeyac’s itch for title and authority and sublimity. I shall reign only until you are well enough to resume your position as regent. Then I will be on my way, resuming my campaign of recruitment.”