Aztec Autumn - Jennings Gary (книга бесплатный формат .TXT) 📗

Nocheztli so hastily and happily stooped to make the gesture of kissing the earth that he very nearly fell asprawl at my feet. When he scrambled erect, he left my presence even more respectfully, walking backward all the way out of the throne room.

But he had barely gone when he was succeeded by another warrior requesting audience, and this one had brought with him a rather frightened-looking woman of the common folk. They both touched the floor in the tlalqualiztli gesture, and the man said:

"Forgive my urgency, my lord, but this woman came to our barracks to report having found, when she first opened her door this morning, a dead body in the alley outside."

"Why are you telling me this, iyac? Likely some drunkard who drank beyond his capacity."

"Forgive my correcting you, my lord. This was a warrior, and he had been stabbed in the back. Furthermore, he had been stripped of his battle armor, left wearing only his loincloth, and he bore no weapons."

"Then how do you know he was a warrior?" I snapped, rather peeved at having my day start this way.

Before he answered me, the iyac stooped again to touch the floor, and I turned to see that Ameyatl had entered the room.

"Because, my lord," he continued, "I have served as guard of the prisoners in the Coyolxauqui temple, so I recognized this dead warrior. He was one of the late Yeyac's detestable accomplices."

"But... but..." I stammered, confounded. "They all were to have left the city last night. They did leave. All one hundred thirty and eight of them..."

Ameyatl interrupted, her voice unsteady, "Tenamaxtzin, have you seen anything of Tiptoe?"

"What?" I said, even more confounded.

"She was not at my bedside this morning, as she always has been. I do not recall having seen her since we three were in this room yesterday."

Ameyatl and I must both have realized, on the instant. But we and every remaining servant and even G'nda Ke went searching the palace, every corner of it, and all the palace grounds. No one found Pakapeti, and the only significant discovery was made by me—to wit, that one of the three hidden thunder-sticks also was missing. Tiptoe had deliberately gone forth to kill—and to have whatever was inside her killed—and to be killed herself.

XX

I had calculated that the Knight Tapachini's troop and its escorts should take about five days to get to Compostela, and that the escorts should take rather less time to return and report—or, if there was a good runner among them, he might race ahead and arrive even sooner. Anyway, I had some days to wait to hear the outcome of that mission, and rather than stew in impatience and anxiety, I put the days to profitable use. I left all the boring and exasperating routine of government to Ameyatl and the Speaking Council—I was consulted only on major matters—and betook myself to outdoor pursuits.

My four horses had been well fed and groomed, as I had instructed the handler slaves, and were now handsomely sleek and obviously eager to stretch their legs. So I sought volunteers to learn the riding of them. The first I asked was G'nda Ke, for I expected that she and I would soon be traveling far and fast, in advance of my army, gathering recruits for that army. But she disdainfully spurned the idea of riding. In her inimitable way, she said:

"G'nda Ke already knows everything worth the knowing. What point in learning something new? Besides, G'nda Ke has crossed and recrossed the whole of The One World, and many times, and always on foot, as best becomes a stalwart Yaki. You ride, if you prefer, Tenamaxtli, like a weakling white man. G'nda Ke warrants that she will keep up with you."

I said drily, "You will wear out a lot of those precious sandals of yours," but did not press her further.

I next offered the opportunity to the army knights, in deference to their rank, and was not too surprised when they also declined—though of course not so insultingly as G'nda Ke had done. They said only, "My lord, eagles and jaguars would be ashamed to depend on lesser beasts for their mobility."

So I turned to the ranks of cuachictin, and two of those did volunteer. As I might have expected, the new Cuachic Nocheztli hardly waited to be asked. The other was a middle-aged Mexicatl named Comitl, who had, in his youth, been among those warriors brought from Tenochtitlan to train ours. He had more recently been one of the men who learned from me how to wield an arcabuz. My third volunteer was, to my astonishment, the army's surgeon, that Ticitl Ualiztli of whom I have spoken.

"If you seek only men who can fight on horseback, my lord, naturally I will understand your refusing me. But, as you can easily see, I am considerably overaged and oversized for marching with the army, and carrying my heavy sack while I do so."

"I do not refuse you, Ualiztli. I think a ticitl should be enabled to move quickly about a battlefield, the more easily to administer his services. And I have seen many mounted Spaniards much older and heavier than yourself; if they could ride, surely you can learn."

So, during those days of waiting, I taught the three men as much as I myself knew about handling a horse—devoutly wishing that the far more adroit Tiptoe were there to oversee their training. We did our practices alternately on the paved central square and on grassier grounds elsewhere, and wherever we did, crowds of city folk came to stare—from a discreet distance—in awe and admiration. I let Ticitl Ualiztli use the other saddle on his horse, and Comitl and Nocheztli manfully refrained from complaining at having to jounce about on the ridgepole-steep bare backs of the other two mounts.

"It will toughen you," I assured them, "so that when eventually we confiscate other horses and their saddles from the white soldiers, you will find riding to be easeful indeed."

However, by the time my three students had become at least as adept at riding as I was, our activities had ceased to distract me from anxiety. Seven days had passed since the departure of Tapachini and his men, time enough for a swift-messenger to have returned to Aztlan, and none had. An eighth day passed, and then a ninth, time enough for all the escort guards to have returned.

"Something has gone terribly wrong," I growled, on the tenth day, as I moodily paced the throne room. For the moment, I was confiding my consternation only to Ameyatl and G'nda Ke. "And I have no way of knowing what!"

My cousin suggested, "The condemned men may have decided to evade their doom. But they could not have slipped away from the line of march by ones and twos, or the escorts would have reported to you. So they must have risen up in mass—they were many and the escorts few—then, after slaying their guards, fled together or separately beyond your reach."

"I have naturally thought of that," I grumbled. "But they had kissed the earth in oath. And they had once been honorable men."

"So was Yeyac—once," Ameyatl said bitterly. "While our father was present to keep him loyal and manly and trustworthy."

"Still," I objected, "I find it hard to believe that not one of those men would have kept his oath—at least to come and tell me that the others had not. And remember, it is virtually certain that Pakapeti was among them in man's disguise. She would never desert."

"Perhaps it was she," said G'nda Ke, with her distinctive gloating grin, "who slew them all."

I did not dignify that crass remark with any comment of my own. Ameyatl said, "If Yeyac's men did kill their escorts, they would scarcely have balked at killing Tiptoe—or any others of their own—who stood firm against them."