Aztec Blood - Jennings Gary (книги онлайн бесплатно серия .txt) 📗

"I've never met a bandit before."

"Oh yes, you did, my love. During one of your husband's early bull-fighting performances."

"Nonsense. My husband was an important man. You would not be permitted in our presence."

"It was not your husband who permitted me. It was you who invited me under your dress."

She stared deeply into my eyes, mesmerized by the hint of familiarity she saw there.

"The last time you stared so intently into my eyes, you gave me a kick that made me fall and nearly break my neck."

She gaped. "No! It can't be!"

"Yes. I remember that day very well." I put my hand on her knee and slowly worked it up her thigh. "I remember that you wore no... oh, you still do not."

Her witches teat was still there, as diamond-hard as an aroused garrancha. After my hand found it, I slipped off of the seat and knelt between her legs. I pushed up her dress to expose her naked parts. Her legs spread, and my head descended into her innermost recesses. I playfully tongued that oh-so-titillating teat. It was as delicious as it had been years before.

My tongue was intently exploring a deeper, even more depraved domain when a shot was fired. My bandit comrade let out a yelp of pain and fell dead from the driver's seat. The horses bolted and we had a wild ride until soldados had caught up with the carriage.

A moment later one of them jerked open the door to the carriage.

"Are you all right, senora?"

"Yes."

"Did they harm you?"

"No, I am untouched."

"There was one who jumped into the carriage. Where did he go?"

Ah, that was the question. Where I had gone was under her dress. She was not wearing one of those dresses big enough to hide an elephant under. But with a blanket over her lap and my legs and feet under the seat, I was reasonably hidden. Until she turned me in, and the soldados dragged me out of the coach and chopped off my head.

"Where did he go?" she repeated. I could hear the question in her voice. Not as to my whereabouts—I was still between her legs. But whether I should lose my head.

"He's gone," she said, "leaped from the carriage."

The soldados escorted the carriage to an inn. The alcalde's widow refused to get out of the carriage. She told an officer she wanted to stay aboard and "rest" in privacy. Eh, amigos, it was no rest for me. She kept me busy until I escaped into the dark night.

To this day I do not know whether she protected me because she did not want to be exposed herself... or because she loved my tongue.

ONE HUNDRED AND THREE

In truth, the big robberies were very few and very far between. For the most part my life was a dangerous, ill-trod mountain path, trailing sheer cliffs and split by forks. In my second year as a bandit, I came to one of those forks.

New Spain was a big land, but like Rome, all roads eventually lead to Ciudad Mexico. If one stayed around the main roads, or in my case, committed acts of banditry along them, one would eventually encounter one's past, just as I had met the alcalde's wife. It occurred on one of those roads, which was little more than a trail through a mountain pass.

When the treasure fleet arrived from Seville and the galleon with the riches of the Orient from Manila, my amigos and I made sure we got some small piece of the riches. Ay, it was not an easy task, and by that second year of banditry those pieces were getting smaller. More soldados were patrolling the roads now due to my fame, and especially patrolling the roads when the treasure fleets were in. Everyone on the roads proceeded with extreme caution. The silver trains were heavily guarded. Travelers joined in massive caravans, like those of the Arabian deserts. With each month the pickings had grown increasingly slim.

In those hard times we often had to content ourselves with easy targets—well-to-do travelers foolish enough to travel alone. Most often these solitary wayfarers were well-mounted and relied on their animals to outrun any bandits. But this one time the traveler journeyed by litter and was such a sitting duck I wondered if it was a trap, such as the one Yanga had sprung on me.

We saw the litter from where we had been camped the night before. It had been more than two weeks since we had stolen anything significant and even that had been only a merchant hauling cocoa beans to Acapulco. My three men were grumbling, and I was going to have to add more ears to my collection if we did not relieve some fat merchant of mucho dinero. I decided we could not pass up such an easy target.

We studied him from above and determined his sex by a protruding arm. A very foolish man, was my basic impression. The litter was carried by two mules and two indios guided them, but that was all. He was unprotected.

Eh, amigos, perhaps our luck was changing.

We came down like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, waving our swords, our war screams terrifying. The two indios naturally fled, but rather than some plump priest or merchant climbing out of the litter, a caballero flew out of it with his sword flashing. My best bandito, who got to the litter ahead of me, lost his horse and his life. As I charged, the caballero leaped on my dead amigo's horse and wheeled to face me. When I saw his face, I was so shocked I nearly lost my life. I steered my horse just in time to avoid Mateo's sword.

"Mateo! It's Bastardo! Your Bastardo!"

"Santa Maria," he whispered. Then he roared with laughter. "Cristo! Didn't I teach you how to be a better thief?"

His hair was streaked with gray as was his beard. He was almost as gaunt as I had been after I escaped from the mines. When he told me his story that night around the campfire, I saw why.

"The trip west across the great Southern Sea, the one you called the Western Sea, is hell afloat. Acapulco to Manila is three times farther than Veracruz to Seville. It takes several months to make the trip. Many died aboard. The return trip along the famous monk-navigator Urdaneta's route is even farther and takes over four months. Many more died. When we were told that the viceroy sent the lice of New Spain to the Filipinas to die, we were lied to. They were sent to die at sea."

"And Manila? What of it?" I asked.

"A pretty place but not a great city, a place to lie in the shade and wait to grow old and die while a native girl fans you with a palm leaf. For a man like me who loves the excitement of comedias and the romance of the Alameda, Manila was barren."

We camped high in the mountains to ensure that we would not be surprised by soldados. The two of us sat up most of the night around a fire in a cave talking about our lives and adventures.

Already weakened from months in the hands of the Inquisition, Mateo had barely survived the voyage across the great sea. In the Filipinas, he was sent to a country farm to act as an overseer; but as soon as his strength returned, he was in much demand by the viceroy in Manila as a swordsman.

"My days as a prisoner ended. I fought Malay pirates, yellow devils, tougher than the most bloodthirsty pirates terrorizing the Spanish Main. I killed a hundred of them and saved a chino princess. Her father gave her to me in marriage and my own kingdom. But the princess had a jealous suitor with a big army, and I ended up escaping with just the crown jewels to keep me warm. I went to China, the land of the chinos, and stood upon a great wall that is long enough to enclose all of Spain. I visited an island where the people call themselves Japones and their warrior class, called samurai, are the toughest fighters on earth. I came back to New Spain with enough wealth to buy the entire City of Mexico and turn it into my personal hacienda."