Aztec Autumn - Jennings Gary (версия книг .txt) 📗
"What is this?" I demanded, as soon as he was within hearing. "Nothing whatever to report?"
"Ayya, yes, my lord, but most curious news. I rode all the way to the town's outlying slave quarter, without ever being challenged. And there I found the defenses I long ago told you about—the gigantic thunder-tubes on wheels, and with soldiers all about them. But those thunder-tubes are still aimed inward, toward the town itself! And the soldiers gave me only a casual wave of greeting. So I made gestures to indicate that I had found this unsaddled horse wandering loose in the vicinity, and that I was trying to find its proper owner, and then I turned and came back this way—not in haste, for I had heard no owl hoot."
The Cuachic Comitl frowned and asked me, "What do you make of this, Tenamaxtzin? Is this man's report to be believed? Remember, he was once in league with that enemy."
Nocheztli protested, "I kiss the earth to the truth of it!" and made the tlalqualiztli—as well as he could, sitting atop a horse.
"I believe you," I said to him, and then to Comitl, "Nocheztli has several times before now proved himself loyal to me. However, the situation is curious indeed. It is possible that the Arrow Knight Tapachini and his men never came to warn Compostela at all. But it is just as possible that the Spaniards are laying some cunning trap. If so, we are still clear of it. Let us proceed as planned. I and Ualiztli will now turn westward. You and Nocheztli go east. The men afoot will separately follow us. We will circle wide around the town and meet again well south of it, sometime after dark."
At this place on the trail, there was fairly thick forest to either side, and when the ticitl and I rode into it, we found ourselves in a gradually deepening twilight. I was hoping that the warriors a hundred paces behind us could still see us, and worrying that I might outdistance them when the dark really came down. But that worry was suddenly, shockingly driven from my mind—when I heard a loud and familiar noise from somewhere back of us.
"That was an arcabuz!" I gasped, and Ualiztli and I both reined our horses to a halt.
The words were scarcely spoken when there came a positive clamor of arcabuces being discharged—singly, severally, randomly, or a good number of them simultaneously—and all of them somewhere to our rear. But not far to our rear; the evening breeze brought me the acrid smell of their polvora smoke.
"But how could we all have missed seeing—?" I started to say. Then I remembered something, and I realized what was happening. I remembered that Spanish soldier-fowler on the shore of Lake Texcoco, and how he discharged a whole battery of his arcabuces by yanking on a string.
These I was hearing now did not even have Spaniards holding them. They had been fastened to the ground or to trees, and a string tautly stretched from each of their gatillos through the underbrush. My horse and Ualiztli's had not so far touched any string, but the warriors behind us were tripping against them, thus raking their own ranks with lethal flying lead balls.
"Do not move!" I said to the ticitl.
But he objected, "There will be wounded to attend!" and started to rein his horse around.
Well, it would eventually turn out that I had miscalculated regarding more things than just the ingenuity of the defenders of Compostela. But I had been right about one thing: The people of my own race could move as soundlessly as shadows and as invisibly as wind. The next moment, a terrific blow to my ribs knocked me clear off my saddle. As I thudded to the ground, I barely glimpsed a man in Azteca armor, wielding a maquahuitl, before he struck me again—using the wooden flat of the sword, not the obsidian edge—in the head, this time, and all the world around me went black.
When I came awake, I was seated on the ground, my back propped against a tree. My head was throbbing abominably and my vision was fogged. I blinked to clear it, and when I saw the man standing before me—leaning on his maquahuitl, waiting patiently for me to regain consciousness—I involuntarily moaned:
"By all the gods! I have died and gone to Mictlan!"
"Not yet, cousin," said Yeyac. "But be assured that you will."
XXI
When I tried to move, I discovered that I was securely roped to the tree, and so was Ualiztli, beside me. Evidently he had not been so emphatically unhorsed, for he was well awake and cursing under his breath. Still dazed, slurring my words, I asked him:
"Ticitl, tell me. Is it possible that this man, once killed, could have come back to life?"
"In this case, clearly, yes," the physician said morosely. "The possibility had earlier occurred to me, when you told me that you had kept him lying facedown, so his blood would the more copiously drain out of him. What that in fact accomplished was to allow the blood to clot at the entry site of the wound. If no vital organs had been mangled, and if the seeming corpse was whisked away by his friends, quickly enough, any competent ticitl could have healed him. Believe me, Tenamaxtzin, it was not I who did it. But, yya ayya ouiya, you should have kept him face up."
Yeyac, who had listened to this exchange with wry amusement, now said, "I was worried, cousin, that you might have caught one of those lead balls from the ambuscade that my good Spanish allies so craftily arranged. When one of my iyactin came to tell me that he had taken you alive, I was so very pleased that I knighted the man on the spot."
As my addled wits began to clear somewhat, I growled, "You have no authority to knight anyone at all."
"Have I not? Why, cousin, you even brought me the quetzal-feather headdress. I am again the Uey-Tecutli of Aztlan."
"Then why would you want me alive, able to contest that gross assumption?"
"I am merely obliging my confederate, the Governor Coronado. It is he who wants you alive. For a short time, at least, so he can ask you certain questions. After that... well... he has promised you to me. I leave the rest to your imagination."
Not being overeager to dwell on that, I asked, "How many of my men are dead?"
"I have no idea. I do not care. All those who survived certainly scattered in a hurry. They are no longer a fighting force. Now, apart and in the darkness, they are doubtless wandering far and wide—lost, unnerved, disconsolate—like the Weeping Woman Chicociuatl and the other aimless ghosts of the night. Come daylight, the Spanish soldiers should have little difficulty subduing them, one by one. Coronado will be pleased to have such strong men to slave in his silver mines. And, ayyo, here comes a squad to escort you to the governor's palace."
The soldiers loosed me from the tree, but kept my arms tightly bound as they led me out of the woods and down the trail to Compostela. Yeyac followed, with Ualiztli, and where they went I did not see. I was penned overnight in a cell room of the palace, unfed and unwatered but well guarded, and not brought before the governor until sometime the next morning.
Francisco Vasquez de Coronado was, as I had been told, a man no older than myself, and he was—for a white man—of goodly appearance, neatly bearded, even clean-looking. My guards untied me, but stayed in the room. And there was another soldier present, who, it became apparent, spoke Nahuatl and was to serve as interpreter.
Coronado addressed him at length—of course I understood every word—and the soldier repeated to me, in my native tongue:
"His Excellency says that you and another warrior were carrying thunder-sticks when you were captured and the other was killed. One of the weapons was obviously the property of the Royal Spanish Army. The other was obviously a handmade imitation. His Excellency wants to know who made that copy, and where, and how many have been made and how many are being made. Tell also whence came the polvora for them."
