Aztec Autumn - Jennings Gary (версия книг .txt) 📗

"That does not matter either. What matters is that you, too, Tenamaxtli, have left Aztlan. And now you are of a disposition to accept G'nda Ke's gift of her other disease."

I blurted, "By Huitzli, I want none of your afflictions!"

"Ayyo, but you do! You just spoke the word—the name of him—Huitzilopochtli, god of war. For that is G'nda Ke's other disease, and one she will happily help you spread through all The One World. War!"

I could only stare at her. I had not lately partaken of chapari, so this awful creature was hardly a drunken hallucination.

"You will recruit no warriors here, Tenamaxtli. Do not be tempted to loiter in this easeful Utopia. Your tonali has destined you to a harder life, and a more glorious one. Go north. You and G'nda Ke will meet again, probably many times, along the way. Wherever you need her, she will be there, to help infect others with the sublime disease that you and she share."

She had been walking backward away from me as she spoke, and was now at some distance, so I shouted, "I need you not! I want you not! I can make war without you! Go back to the Mictlan you came from."

Just before she disappeared around a corner of one of the village houses, she spoke a last time, not loudly but audibly, and ominously:

"Tenamaxtli, no man can ever repulse or elude a woman bent on spite and malice. You will never be rid of this one while she still lives and hates and schemes."

Padre Vasco said, "I never even heard of the Yaki."

I told him, "They abide in the very farthest northwest corner of The One World. In forests and mountain ranges far beyond the desert wastes that our people call the Dead-Bone Lands. The Yaki are reputed to be the fiercest, most bloodthirsty of savages, loathing every other human being, including their own nearest relatives. I am quite ready to give credence to that reputation, after meeting my first Yaki yesterday. If the women are all like her, the men must be fiends indeed."

It was because I liked and admired Vasco de Quiroga that I had troubled to revisit his capital village of Santa Cruz Patzcuaro. Leaving out any mention of the Yaki woman's warlike aspirations—those she had expressed yesterday as well as those imputed to her in Canautli's tales of long ago—I recounted to the padre what else I knew of her evil doings and intentions.

"It happened in a time before imagining," I said, "but the happenings were never forgotten. The words were repeated from one aged Rememberer to the next. How that mysterious Yaki woman insinuated herself into our serene Aztlan, preaching the worship of an alien god, and thereby setting brother against brother."

"Hmmm," mused the padre. "Lilith comes to Cain and Abel."

"Pardon?" I said.

"Nothing. Go on, my son."

"Well, either she did not die, all those ages ago, and became a demoness immortal, or she spawned a long line of demoness daughters. For there is most certainly just such a Yaki woman trying to disrupt your Utopia. This G'nda Ke is far more of a menace to your colonists here than any number of Purempe women merely hungry for a man's embrace. It was my great-grandfather's belief that because the Yaki males are notorious for cruelly abusing their females, this particular Yaki woman is out to wreak revenge on every man alive."

"Hmmm," the padre murmured again. "Ever since Lilith, every country of the Old World has known a similar female predator, eager to rip the entrails out of any male. Real woman or mythical, who can say? In various languages she is the harpy, the lamia, the witchwife, the nightmare hag, la bella dama sin merced. But tell me, Juan Britanico. If I am to thwart this demoness, how do I find and recognize her?"

"It might be difficult," I admitted. "G'nda Ke could pass as a transient young woman of any nation—except the bald Purempecha, of course—even as a Spanish senorita, if she chose to disguise herself. I confess I cannot remember her face well enough to describe her. It was handsome enough, but it seems to blur in my memory. Except for three things. I can tell you that her hair is of no living color. And her skin is flyspecked with freckles. And her eyes are like those of the axolotl lizard. However, if she saw me take the road hither, padre, she would know I intended to warn you about her, and she may well have gone into hiding or fled Utopia altogether."

We were interrupted by the sudden entry of that young friar I had seen before, now agitated and shouting:

"Padre! Come quickly! A terrible fire to the eastward! San Marcos Churitzio—the guitarra village—it seems to be all ablaze!"

We dashed outdoors and looked where he pointed. An immense column of smoke was rising there, much like the one I had once caused to rise over Grasshopper Hill. But this mischief was none of my doing, so I stayed where I stood when Padre Vasco, his friars and everyone else of Santa Cruz went running to help their neighbors in San Marcos. I of course assumed that the fire was the work of that malevolent G'nda Ke—until I felt a tug at my mantle and turned to find that Tiptoe, this time having personified her name, had slipped up noiselessly behind me. She was smiling broadly, triumphantly, so I said:

"You did that! Set that village afire."

"Not I, but my warrior women. Ever since I assembled them, we have been searching for you, Tenamaxtli. I saw you in that village yonder. When you departed, I gave orders to my women, then I followed you here." She added, with some scorn, "I could see that you had acquired no other followers."

I gestured toward the smoke. "But why do that? Those Mexica are a harmless lot."

"Because they are a harmless lot. To show you what we mere women can do. Come, Tenamaxtli, before the Spaniards return. Come and meet the first recruits of your army of rebellion."

I accompanied her to a mountainside overlooking the lake, where her "warriors" had regrouped to wait for her after their torch-bearing foray among the buildings of Erasmo's village. Besides Tiptoe, there were forty-two females, of all ages from barely nubile to matronly. Though they were also of varying degrees of sightliness—uniformly bald, of course—all looked healthy, sturdy and determined to show their mettle. I was resignedly thinking, "Well, they are only women, but they are forty-three more allies than I have had until now...," when suddenly my masculine presumptuousness was rebuked.

"Pakapeti," one of the older women barked at her. "It was you who enlisted us in this venture. Why now do you ask us to accept this stranger as our leader?"

I expected Tiptoe to say something about my masterly qualities of leadership, or at least to mention the fact that this "venture" was originally my idea, but all she said was, turning to me, "Tenamaxtli, show them how your arcabuz works."

Though considerably exasperated, I did as she said—charging the weapon, then discharging it at a squirrel perched on a tree limb not too far distant (and this time, happily, hitting what I aimed at). The ball of lead fairly disintegrated the little animal, but the women excitedly fingered the remaining scraps of fur and handed them around, and clucked admiringly at the destructiveness of the thunder-stick, and marveled at my possessing such a thing. Then, all together, they began to clamor that I show them how to wield the arcabuz, and that I let them take turns at practicing with it.

"No," I said firmly. "If and when each of you procures a thunder-stick of your own, then I will teach you how to use it."