Aztec Autumn

by Gary Jennings

  He handed me three or four grape leaves from a bunch he had brought, and on them were white marks scratched by a sharp twig. I was pleased to see that the runner knew how to count properly—the dots for ones, the little flags for twenties, the little trees for hundreds. I handed the leaves to Nochéztli and said, “Sum up the total for me.”

  The runner went on to tell that the column was so long and populous, and moving only at a walking pace, that it was four days in passing his hiding place. Though it stopped each night and made rough camp, he dared not sleep himself, for fear of missing anyone or anything that Coronado might have ordered to proceed secretly in the dark. At intervals during his story, the runner handed me more leaves—“the count of the horses for riding, my lord” and “the count of the horses and other beasts bearing packs” and “the count of the unarmored men—some white, some black, some indio—herding the animals or bearing packs themselves” and finally “the count of the horned beasts called cattle, which brought up the end of the column.”

  I handed each leaf tally in turn to Nochéztli, then said, “Swift-runner, you have done exceedingly well. What is your name and rank?”

  “I am Pozonéli, my lord, and I am only a yaoquízqui recruit.”

  “No longer. Henceforth you are an iyac. Go you now, Iyac Pozonéli, and eat and drink and sleep your fill. Then take you a woman—any Purémpe or any slave, your choice, and tell her it is by my command. You deserve the best refreshment we can accord you.”

  Nochéztli had been shuffling the grape leaves and muttering to himself. Now he said:

  “If the count is correct, Tenamáxtzin, and I can vouch for Pozonali’s reputation for reliability, this defies belief. Here is what I make the totals. Besides Coronado and the friar, two hundreds plus fifty of mounted soldiers, with six hundreds plus twenty of riding horses. Another seventy and four of soldiers afoot. Fully ten hundreds of pack animals. Another ten hundreds of those unarmored men—slaves, bearers, drovers, cooks, whatever they are. And four hundreds plus forty of cattle.” He concluded, a little wistfully, “I envy the Spaniards all that fresh meat on the hoof.”

  I said, “We can assume that Coronado took with him only the most experienced officers and best-trained men available, and the best horses, and even the strongest and most loyal slaves. Also the newest and best-made arcabuces, the swords and spears of stoutest and sharpest steel. And many of those packs would have been full of pólvora and lead. It means that he has left New Galicia—perhaps all this western end of New Spain—garrisoned only with discards and dregs of the soldiery, all of them probably ill-supplied with weapons and the charges for them, all of them also probably ill at ease, since they are under the command of officers Coronado thought unfit for his expedition.” Half to myself, I added, “The fruit is ripe.”

  Still wistfully, Nochéztli said, “Even a fruit would taste good, about now.”

  I laughed and said, “I agree. I am as hungry as you are. We shall delay no longer. If the tail of that long procession is already two days north of us, and we go south, there is not much likelihood that Coronado will get news of our move. Spread the word throughout the camps. We will march at tomorrow’s dawn. Right now, send your hunters and foragers out ahead of us, so we can hope to have a decent meal tomorrow night. Also have all your knights and other leading officers attend me for their instructions.”

  When those men—and the one female officer, Butterfly—were assembled, I told them:

  “Our first objective will be a town called Tonalá, southeast of here. I have information that it is growing fast, attracting many Spanish settlers, and that a cathedral is planned to be built there.”

  “Excuse me, Tenamáxtzin,” said one of the officers. “What is a cathedral?”

  “A tremendous temple of the white men’s religion. Such great temples are erected only in places that are expected to become great cities. Thus I believe that the town of Tonalá is intended to replace Compostela as the Spaniards’ capital city of New Galicia. We will do our utmost to discourage that intention—by destroying, leveling, obliterating that Tonalá.”

  The officers all nodded and grinned at each other in gleeful anticipation.

  “When we approach that place,” I went on, “our army will halt while scouts steal out around the town. When they report back to me, I will decide the disposition of our forces for the assault. Meanwhile, I also want scouts preceding us on the way there. Ten of them, alert Aztéca men, fanned out well ahead of our column. If they espy any kind of settlement or habitation in our path, even a hermit’s hut, I am to be told immediately. If they encounter anyone at all, of whatever color, even a child out picking mushrooms, I want that person brought immediately to me. Go now. Make sure those orders are understood by all.”

  I do not know—once our column was on the march and strung out behind me—how many days it would have been in passing any given point We numbered nearly eight times as many people as Coronado was leading, but we did not have his herds of horses, mules and cattle. We possessed only the same two unsaddled horses that Nochéztli had retrieved from the long-ago ambush outside Compostela. He and I rode those as we left the Chicomóztotl encampment and took a southeastward winding trail that brought us gradually down from the mountains to the lower lands. And I have to say that whenever I looked back at the long, coiling, weaponbristled train that followed us, I could not help feeling pridefully rather like a conquistador myself.

  To everyone’s great relief and greater joy, the vanguard hunters and foragers did provide us all with a fairly substantial meal from our first night on the march, and increasingly tasty and nourishing victuals during the subsequent days. Also, to the great relief of my rump and Nochéztli’s, we eventually acquired two saddles. One of our advance scouts came running, one day, to report that there was a Spanish army outpost just one-long-run farther along the trail. It was, like the one Tiptoe and I had once encountered, a shack containing two soldiers and a pen containing four horses, two of them saddled.

  I halted the train and Nochéztli summoned to us six warriors armed with maquáhuime. To them I said:

  “I will not waste powder and lead on such a trivial obstacle. If you six cannot sneak up to that post and dispatch those white men on the instant, you do not deserve to be carrying swords. Go and do exactly that. One caution, however: try not to tear or bloody the clothes they wear.”

  The men did the gesture of kissing the earth, and dashed off through the underbrush. In a very short time they came back, all of them beaming happily and two of them holding high, by the hair, the heads of the two Spanish soldiers, dripping blood from their bearded neck stumps.

  “We did it ever so neatly, my lord,” said one of them. “Only the ground got bloody.”

  So we proceeded on to the guard shack, where we scavenged, besides the four horses, two more arcabuces, pólvora and balls for them, two steel knives and two steel swords. I set some men to stripping the soldiers’ bodies of their armor and other garb, which was indeed unblemished except for the ingrained dirt and crusted sweat to be expected of uncleanly Spaniards. I congratulated the six warriors who had slain the soldiers, and the scouts who had found them, and told those scouts to go on ahead of us as before. Then I called for our two white men, Uno and Dos, to report to me.

  “I have gifts for you,” I told them. “Not only better clothes than those rags you are wearing, but also steel helmets and armor and stout boots.”

  “By the blood, Cap’n John, but we are grateful to you,” said Uno. “Traveling shanks’s-nag is hard enough on our old sea legs, let alone doing it baldfooted.”

  I took that goose language to be a complaint about their having to walk, and said, “You will not need to walk any farther, if you can ride horseback.”

  “If we could ride a shipwreck over the Tortoise reefs,” said Dos, “I would reckon we can ride anything.”

  “Might I ask, Cap’n,” said Uno. “How come we gets kitted out so fancy, and not some of your chief mates?”

/>   “Because, when we get to Tonalá, you two are going to be my mice.”

  “Mice, Cap’n?”

  “I will explain when the time comes. Now, while the rest of us move on, you get into those uniforms, strap on the swords, get onto the two horses I am leaving for you and catch up to us as soon as you can.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  So Nochéztli and I had comfortable saddles again, and the two spare horses I put to use as pack animals, relieving several of my warriors of the heavy lead they were carrying.

  The next event of any note occurred some days later, and this time I was not forewarned by my Aztéca scouts. Nochéztli and I rode over a low ridge and found ourselves looking down on some mud huts clustered on the bank of a large pond. Four of our scouts were there, drinking water given them by the villagers and sociably smoking poquíetin with them. I raised a hand to halt the column behind me and said to Nochéztli, “Collect all your knights and leading officers and join me yonder.” He saw the look on my face and wordlessly went back to the train as I rode down to the little settlement.

  I leaned from my horse and asked one of the scouts, “Who are these people?”

  My look and my tone of voice made him stammer slightly. “Only—only simple fisher folk, Tenamáxtzin.” And he beckoned to the oldest of the men present.

  The old rustic sidled closer to me, fearful of my horse, and addressed me as respectfully as if I had been a mounted Spaniard. He spoke the tongue of the Kuanéhuata, which is a language sufficiently similar to Náhuatl that I was able to understand him.

  “My lord, as I was telling your warrior here, we live by fishing this pond. Only we few families, as our ancestors have done since time before time.”

  “Why you? Why here?”

  “There lives in this pond a small and delectable whitefish that can be found in no other waters. Until lately, they have been our commodity of trade with other Kuanéhuata settlements.” He waved vaguely eastward. “But now there are white men—south, in Tonalá. They also esteem these unique fish, and we can trade for rich goods such as we have never before—”

  He broke off, looking past me as Nochéztli and his officers came to stand, maquáhuime in hand, in a menacing ring about the cluster of huts. All the other folk huddled together, the men protectively putting their arms about the women and children. I spoke over my shoulder:

  “Knight Nochéztli, give the order to kill the scouts.”

  “What? Tenamáxtzin, they are four of our best—” But he also broke off, when I turned my look on him, and obediently nodded to his nearest officers. Before the stunned and unbelieving scouts could move or make a sound of protest, they had been beheaded. The old man and his villagers stared in horror at the bodies lying twitching on the ground, and at the heads, apart, which were blinking their eyes as if still in disbelief of their fate.

  I told the old man, “There will be no more white men for you to trade with. We are marching on Tonalá to make sure of that. Any of you who wish to come with us—and help us slaughter those white men—may do so, and welcome. Any who do not will be put to death right here where you stand.”

  “My lord,” pleaded the old man. “We have no quarrel with the white men. They have traded fairly with us. Since they came, we have prospered more than—”

  “I have heard that argument too often before,” I interrupted him. “I will say this just once again. There will be no white men, fair traders or otherwise. You saw what I have done to men of my own who took my words too lightly. Those of you who are coming, come now.”

  The old man turned to his people and spread his arms helplessly. Several of the men and boys, and two or three of the sturdier women, one of them leading her boy-child, stepped forward and made the kissing-the-earth gesture to me.

  The old man sadly shook his head and said, “Even were I not too aged to fight and even to march, my lord, I would not leave this place of my fathers and my fathers’ fathers. Do what you will.”

  What I did was take off his head with my own steel sword. At that, all the remaining men and boys of the village hastened to step forward and make the tlalqualíztli gesture. So did most of the women and young girls. Only three or four other females, holding babies in their arms or with infants clutching to their skirts, remained where they were.

  “Tenamáxtzin,” said the cóyotl-faced officer Butterfly, with a solicitude I would not have expected of her, “those are innocent women and tiny children.”

  “You have killed others just like them,” I said.

  “But those were Spaniards!”

  “These women can talk. These children can point. I want no witnesses left alive.” I tossed her my spare sword, an obsidian-edged maquáhuitl that hung by a thong from my pommel, because she was carrying only an arcabuz. “Here. Pretend they are Spaniards.”

  And so she did, but clumsily, because she was obviously reluctant to do it. Hence her victims suffered more than the several men had done, cowering under her blows and having to be hacked at more often than should have been necessary. By the time Butterfly was done, their copiously spilled blood had trickled down the bank and was staining the water red at the pond’s margin. The villagers who had surrendered themselves to me—all of them wailing and tearing their hair and mantles—were herded back among our slave contingent, and I ordered that they be closely watched, lest they try to flee.

  We had gone a considerable distance from that place before Nochéztli worked up courage enough to speak to me again. He nervously cleared his throat and said:

  “Those were people of our own race, Tenamáxtzin. The scouts were men of our own city.”

  “I would have slain those if they were my brothers born. I grant you that I have cost us four good warriors, but I promise you that, from this day on, not a single other of our army will ever be negligent of my commands, as were those four.”

  “That is certain,” Nochéztli admitted. “But those Kuané-huata you ordered slain—they had neither opposed nor angered you…”

  “They were, at heart, as much in league with and dependent on the Spaniards as Yeyac was. So I gave them the same choice I gave Yeyac’s warriors. Join us or die. They chose. See here, Nochéztli, you have not had the benefit of Christian teaching, as I did in my younger days. The priests were fond of telling us stories from the annals of their religion. They particularly rejoiced in recounting the exploits and sayings of their godling called Jesucristo. I well remember one of that godling’s sayings. ‘He that is not with me is against me.’ ”

  “And you wished to leave no witnesses to our passage, I realize that, Tenamáxtzin. But you must know that eventually, inevitably, the Spanish are going to hear of our army and our intent.”

  “Ayyo, indeed they will. I want them to. I am planning to threaten and taunt them with it. But I want the white men to know only enough to keep them in uncertainty, in apprehension, in terror. I do not wish them to know our number, our strength of armament, our position at any given time, or our course of march. I want the white men starting in fright at every unexpected noise, recoiling from every unfamiliar sight, becoming distrustful of every stranger they see, getting neck cramps from forever looking over their shoulders. Let them think us evil spirits, and countless, impossible to find, and likely to strike here, there, anywhere. There must be no witnesses who can tell them anything different.”

  Some days later, one of our scouts came trotting from the southern horizon to tell me that the town of Tonalá was within easy reach, about four one-long-runs distant. His fellow scouts, he said, were at the moment making their cautious way around the town’s outskirts, to determine the extent of it. All he could tell me, from his own brief observation, was that Tonalá seemed to be mostly of new-built structures, and there were no visible thunder-tubes guarding its perimeter.

  I halted the column and gave orders for all contingents to spread out into separate camps, as they had done at Chicomóztotl, and to prepare to stay encamped for longer than just overnight. I also called
for Uno and Dos and told them:

  “Another gift for you, señores. Nochéztli and I are going to lend you our saddled horses for a time.”

  “Bless ye, Cap’n John,” said Dos with a heartfelt sigh. “From Hell, Hull and Halifax, Good Lord deliver us.”

  Uno said, “Miles bragged that we could ride anything, but, begod, we did not reckon on riding the German Chair. Our blindcheeks are hurting like we been catted and keelhauled the whole way here.”

  I did not ask for explanation of this goose gabble, but only gave them their instructions.

  “The town of Tonalá is yonder. This scout will lead you there. You will be my mice on horseback. Other scouts are circling the town, but I want you to probe the interior. Do not ride in until after dark, but then try to look like haughty Spanish soldiers and prowl around as much as possible. Bring me, as best you can, a description of the place—an estimate of its population, both white and otherwise—and, most important, a fair count of the soldiers stationed there.”

  “But what if we are challenged, John British?” asked Uno. “We can hardly speak any response, let alone a password. Do we give them a taste of our steel?” He touched the sheathed sword at his belt.

  “No. If anyone addresses you, simply wink lewdly and put a finger to your lips. Since you will be moving quietly and in the dark, they will assume that you are skulking off to visit your maátime.”

  “Our what?”

  “A soldiers’ brothel. A house of cheap whores.”

  “Aye aye, sir!” Dos said enthusiastically. “And can we tickle the little coneys while we are there?”

  “No. You are to do no fighting and no whoring. Only get inside the town, get around in it and get yourselves back here. You can wield your steel when we assail the place, and when we have taken it, you will have plenty of females to frolic with.”

  From the information brought back by the scouts—including Uno and Dos, who said that their presence and prowling had excited no comment whatever—I was able to picture Tonalá in my mind. It was about the same size as Compostela, and about equally populated. Unlike Compostela, though, it had not grown up around an already existing native settlement, but apparently had been founded by Spaniards newly come there. So, except for the usual outlying shacks to house their servants and slaves, they had built substantial residences of adobe and wood. There were also, as in Compostela, two sturdy stone structures: a small church—not yet expanded to be the bishop’s cathedral—and a modest palace for the offices of government and barracks for the soldiers.