Aztec Blood

by Gary Jennings

  Unlike we Mexicas who had no talents except for war, the Toltecs of Tula were the wonder of the One World—scribes, jewelers, stone cutters, carpenters, masons, potters, spinners, weavers, and miners.

  This is the first great city my people and I have cast our eyes upon. We have heard that there are other cities, not as grand as Tula, but fabled in their own right. One was near the Eastern Sea where the People of the Rising Sun had lived. These people were stone giants from the stars. When they returned to the stars, they left behind statues of themselves that were as big as temples.

  ¡Ayya ouiya! We Mexicas had yet to find our place under the sun god. But I knew it was our destiny to someday have a city that put even Tula to shame. But for now, when we first saw Tula, we thought we were looking at the Eastern Heaven.

  As our tribe marched by the great city, even I, their war god, was awed by the palaces and great temples honoring the Plumed Serpent and other gods. We have never seen anything like the grandeur of Tula, buildings with high, jeweled walls and people in rich clothing and jewelry.

  Nor had they seen the Mexicas.

  As we poor nomads from the north marched by, all of our possessions on our backs, our small children in arms, the people of Tula laughed. They called us crude barbarians and poked fun at our animal skins.

  I remembered that ridicule on another day.

  After we passed the city, the army of the Toltec king marched behind us. It was a proud and colorful army. The common warriors wore quilted cotton armor, deerskin sandals, and wooden helmets painted bright colors. But, ayyo, the rich and nobles: their capes were of bright bird feathers, headgear trimmed with gold or silver; over their quilted cotton armor were plates of silver. The army marched with great discipline to the beat of drums and the blast of conch shells. Their weapons were not the crude clubs that we barbarians carried, but slender javelins and obsidian swords. But only the barbarians had bows and arrows; the civilized tribes considered the weapon too clumsy to use.

  A proud and colorful army. But not a fighting army.

  The Toltecs brought up the rear because they pushed us barbarians into the front of battle where many were killed or wounded. When the fighting reached their ranks, the Toltec nobles, who should have been leading their own men into battle, sent their common soldiers in first. The nobles entered the fighting only after most of the enemy were wounded or tired.

  My totem was carried high into the battle. Our warriors in animal skins and crude weapons were the best fighters, but we were heavily outnumbered by the enemy and received no help from our Toltec masters. There was a great slaughter of barbarians as wave after wave of enemy fell upon us, another line of soldiers taking the place of each line we decimated. Finally, the enemy began to break. When it did, the Toltec army, fresh, fed, and rested, surged by us to complete the rout.

  Ayyo. My Mexica stood in the battlefield, splattered with the blood of the enemy, and watched as the Toltecs cheated us out of our victory.

  When it was over, we had few prisoners to sacrifice, and no captured women to give birth to new warriors to replace our fallen comrades.

  The gods would not be pleased by our meager sacrifice. Nor would they be satisfied by the Toltec offering. The greedy Toltecs sacrificed only a few prisoners, the wounded who would have died anyway. The common soldiers they kept as slaves, and the nobles they held for ransom.

  The Toltec king "rewarded" us with inferior blankets, rancid maize, and bent spears. We were told before the battle that we could get a share of the land in the Anáhuac valley taken from the enemy, but the king and his nobles took all of the fertile land for themselves. We were given the side of a mountain, rough ground, too rocky to grow enough maize to fill our bellies.

  The Heart of the One World was a great, green valley with five lakes. The dirt was soft and moist. Maize, beans, and squash grew as if the gods themselves had planted the seed. We Mexicas and other barbarians stared down at the fertile valley from our rattlesnake-infested rocks. And we looked back to Tula, just beyond the valley.

  "Call a council of the Dog People," I told my high priest. "We must repay the treachery of the Toltecs, or they will treat us as whipped curs."

  A dozen nomadic tribes had come from the north to fight for the Toltec king and claim their share of the spoils. We gathered together and swarmed upon Tula. There were no hired warriors to face us. The warriors of Tula had grown fat and lazy, and we slaughtered many—and took more as prisoners for the sacrificial block. Our vengeance was without mercy; we raped and burned the city.

  When the barbaric horde left the city, it was no more. In a few generations, the winds and vines would cover the city, and Tula would forever be nothing more than a legend.

  When it came to dividing up the spoils of land and prisoners, we Mexicas found that our barbarian allies were no more honorable than the Toltecs had been. The other tribes claimed that we did not deserve a significant portion of the spoils because our tribe was small and had contributed little to the victory. My totem had been carried into the thick of the fighting, and I knew that lies were told about our warriors. But I had foreseen the treachery.

  When the council of tribes made the accusation that we had done little to bring about the victory, our Revered Speaker, who spoke my words to Mexicas and others, called forth warriors who carried sacks.

  The warriors came forward and dumped the contents of the sacks on the ground in front of the other council members.

  "These are proof of our contribution to the victory."

  Knowing that there would be treachery, I had instructed the Revered Speaker to have our warriors cut an ear from each enemy they killed and each prisoner they took.

  Two thousand bloody ears were on the ground.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  We had repaid the treachery of the Toltecs and obtained land in the Anáhuac, but we had not fulfilled our destiny as masters of the One World.

  Because we were the smallest of the northern tribes, our share of the valley, a portion next to Lake Texcoco, was the smallest. Maize and other food would grow on the fertile areas, but nearly half of that given to us was lake marsh upon which nothing grew but reeds and water flowers.

  The Mexicas had been given the marsh to ensure that we did not grow and prosper as fast as other tribes. Although it was not long before that the other tribes were barbarians like us, who traded animal skins for cotton clothes; we were still hated by even our allies. They resented the way we sacrificed our prisoners to appease the gods rather than having them work our land and build our homes.

  They claimed horror that we ate the bodies of sacrificed warriors to enhance the power of our own fighting men and that our greatest warriors cut off the skin at the tip of their pene and offer it to the gods as an extra sacrifice.

  Blood-thirsty cannibals, they called us, and refused to marry their daughters to us.

  But we prospered despite the poor quality of the land given us. Because we were next to the lake, we learned to fish and to trap ducks. Soon we were trading those items for food stuffs grown on higher ground. In a generation, our population doubled from plentiful food and raids that brought back women of other tribes.

  To keep the gods appeased with blood, we carried on small wars constantly. Our neighbors in the valley were too powerful for us to attack. Instead, we sent our warriors outside the valley to attack other tribes.

  As we were gaining our strength, a larger tribe gained domination over the valley. The Atzcapotazalco were a powerful tribe and we had to pay tribute to them.

  Because we were now Settled People, I told the Revered Speaker it was time to build a temple to house my heart. No longer would it be carried on a totem.

  It took over a year to build and when it was complete, my people had a special festival to honor me. The tribute collector for the Atzcapotazalco was the lord of Culhuacan. He was ambitious to be master of the valley himself and sought allies.

  My people persuaded him to send one of his daughters to be honored at the fes
tival by being wed to a god. Although we were still a small and unimportant tribe, our fighting prowess was known. To bind us to him, he sent his favorite daughter.

  To receive the daughter of a great lord was an homage to us Mexicas. To pay our respects to her and her father, we prepared her in our usual custom.

  When the lord of Culhuacan came to enjoy our festival, we proudly showed him what we had done to his daughter.

  She had been skinned like a deer to remove her outer coating, from her feet to her head. The carcass had been tossed aside and the skin was slipped into by a small-built male priest in tribute to the nature goddess.

  ¡Ayya ouiya! Rather than being pleased at the honor paid his daughter, the lord of Culhuacan went into a rage and called upon his warriors to attack us. We Mexicas were the finest warriors in the One World, but compared to the other tribes, we were still small in number. The Atzcapotazalco attacked us in great numbers. We were masters of the lake with our boats, and we used them to flee the onslaught. On the lake were two small islands, rocky islets, that no one cared about. Because they had no place else to go, my people landed on them.

  When my totem was brought ashore on one of the islands, I saw an eagle atop a cactus, holding a snake in its beak.

  It was a sign, a message from the gods that we had chosen the right place.

  I called the island Tenochtitlan, Place of the High Priest Tenoch.

  We could not return to the land that had belonged to us because the Atzcapotazalco had seized it as their own, and half of our people were taken prisoner and enslaved.

  But I told my people that they had arrived at the place where their destinies would be fulfilled. I was shocked by the sacrilege of the Atzcapotazalcos. Like the other tribes in the valley, they did not honor their gods as they should; and they had insulted the Mexica god. We vowed revenge but knew that it would have to come when we were strong enough to overpower the enemy.

  The islands were easy to defend and hard to attack. The lake gave us a bounty in fish, frogs, and fowl that could be traded for maize and beans.

  By observing how tiny islets formed from trees in the shallow lake, we learned the chinampa method of farming atop the water. Large reed baskets, each longer and wider than the height of a tall man, were anchored to the bottom of the lake and filled with dirt. Crops grew in the rich dirt. Over time, the chinampas greatly increased the size of the islets themselves.

  As Huitzilopochtli, the tribal god of war, it was my duty to instruct my Mexica people on how to fulfill their destiny now that they had arrived at the place Tenoch had prophesied. We would be a warrior society, with all efforts of our people directed toward creating the finest warriors in the One World.

  Women were to be rewarded for becoming pregnant. Women who died in pregnancy were to be rewarded the same as warriors who died on the battlefield: They were to go to the paradise of the Eastern Heaven. From birth, male children would be inducted into warrior cults. They would be given swords and shields while still wet from their mother's blood and would grow up knowing no other life than that of a warrior.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Mounted atop a high temple, I watched as generations were born and died and Tenochtitlan developed into a proud city. Through marriage and military assistance, my people had grown powerful but were still surrounded by larger empires. And we chaffed under the heel of the Atzcapotazalco Empire, of which we were still a vassal.

  The basket farming had increased the size of Tenochtitlan until it was a large city. Through marriage and other inducements, we had also gained some land along the lake.

  The warrior society I had ordained had created the finest fighting force in the One World. Despite its small size, the army of the Mexica was faster, had greater endurance, and were better fighters than any other tribe.

  The gods had rewarded us, and we rewarded them. To gain the blood that was needed to appease the gods, our warriors needed constant warfare. Because that cannot be done with our neighbors, we hired our warriors out as mercenaries.

  The Mexica name had become feared as it should. We did not retreat in battle. We would pursue an enemy until they dropped. When our warriors marched beyond the reach of our supplies, they marched prisoners with them and ate them to sustain their strength.

  I, too, had learned lessons from the past. When an ambitious prince of Azapotzalco, Maxtla, rose to king by murdering his brother and other contenders, he aggravated other tribes by murdering their leaders and demanding more tribute. I instructed our Revered Speaker that we would need allies to go to war against the powerful empire.

  With Texcoco and Tlacopan as our allies, we made war upon the Azapotzalco.

  Maxtla believed he was a great warrior and maker of war, but he had never fought the Mexica way. After he discovered the power of our army, he sued for peace. My Revered Speaker held a feast to discuss the ending of the war. During the course of the meal, Maxtla asked what meat it was that he was eating.

  "Ambassador stew," my Revered Speaker told him. "We are eating the man you sent with your overture of peace."

  The peace negotiations were a failure.

  The Azapotzalco were defeated. Maxtla fled the battle even while his warriors were fighting. At the sight of him running, they threw down their weapons and fled. My Mexica warriors found Maxtla hiding in a temazcalli, a mud hut used for steam baths.

  They piled wood around the hut and baked him inside.

  When the war was over, we Mexicas were the most powerful tribe in the One World. We were still in the spring of our bloom, but the rewards of empire were soon pouring into Tenochtitlan.

  We had never been numerous people, and we lost many young men in war. We would never be able to control a great empire with a large army as all others before us had done. Instead, we spread out, conquered, and controlled with a reign of terror.

  We defeated enemy armies, terrified their people, and then withdrew, leaving behind an administrator with a small force of warriors. The duty of the administrator was little more than collecting the annual tribute we assessed for the region. The local people were free to follow whatever lifestyle they wished—as long as the tribute was paid. When it was not, or our administrator was harmed or disobeyed, our army quickly subdued the rebellious people and punished them harshly.

  Tenochtitlan became the greatest city in the One World. Not only did our armies march, but our merchants became travelers who brought back to the city the finest luxuries to be found in one corner of the One World to the other. If our merchants were harassed or murdered, the retribution was swift and harsh. When women of another city insulted our merchants by lifting their skirts and displaying their naked buttocks, we killed the inhabitants and razed the city.

  Ayya, we had fulfilled our destiny. But our strategy was so successful, we found few enemies to fight. As the war god of my people, I knew that did not bode well for them. We needed a constant supply of war prisoners to sacrifice so we could continue to fulfill the covenant that had brought us food and prosperity.

  I found a solution in the Flower Wars. These were friendly wars fought with our own allies. Their finest warriors would meet our finest in battle. Little effort was made to kill. Instead, the goal was to capture warriors so they could be sacrificed and then honored by having their captors cook and eat their remains.

  But not even the Flower Wars were always able to satisfy our need for blood. We suffered a burning drought in which the rain god refused to water our crops, and the sun god blazed down until the crops shriveled and died. When the Revered Speaker came to meditate for guidance at my temple, I told him he must pour a river of blood to appease the gods. The gods had given us an empire, and they wanted their reward.

  War had to be waged against even friends to obtain the necessary prisoners, but that year over twenty thousand sacrifices were made. An almost endless line of prisoners went all the way out to the causeways that led across the lake. The priests atop the temple who cut the still-beating hearts out and threw them into Chac-
Mool's bowl were soaked in blood from head to foot. A river of blood ran down the temple steps.

  The whole Mexica nation feasted on the flesh of the defeated warriors.

  The gods were pleased. The rains came and the sun shined.

  All was well with the Mexica people. It had taken us nearly twenty generations, but we had risen to hegemony over the One World.

  But there was always one god who could never be satisfied. Quetzalcóatl, the Plumed Serpent, would not be satisfied with just blood. When he left Tula and sailed over the Eastern Sea, he had declared that he would be returning to claim his kingdom.

  Although my people enjoyed the opulence of the masters of the One World, they always knew that someday Quetzalcóatl would return.

  And the kingdom he would claim was the one they possessed.

  FORTY-NINE

  We left Teotihuacan, left the dream, and I returned to being a servant boy to a traveling magician. The time I had been with the Healer turned into a year and then into another. After my experience with the potion of the flower weaver, I continued to learn the way of the indios, the dialects, the nuances of walk and talk and even thinking. The day came when the Healer paid me the compliment I had long waited for.

  "You no longer smell like a white man," he said.

  Besides knowledge of my indio ancestors' history, I gained respect for them. Aztec history was a bloody one, but besides war, the indios made astronomical discoveries, perfected a calendar, published innumerable books in the picture writing that resembled the hieroglyphics of the Egypt of the pharaohs, and made amazing discoveries in health and medicine. Tenochtitlan was said to be a clean, fresh-smelling city in which waste was hauled away in boats to be used as fertilizer. The floating gardens that took root and created man-made islands and temples larger than any on earth were marvels of engineering.