Aztec - Jennings Gary (книги хорошем качестве бесплатно без регистрации TXT) 📗

Armed Scorpion said to Nezahualpili: "I slew four of your knights, old enemy, to fight free of your cursed ambush. Two Eagles, a Jaguar, and an Arrow. But if I had known what my tonali had in store"—he threw me a look of amused disdain—"I would have let one of them take me."

"You will fight other knights before you die," the Revered Speaker told him, consolingly. "I will see to that. Now let us ease your injuries." He turned and shouted to a doctor working on a man nearby.

"Only a moment, my lord," said the doctor. He was bent over an Acolhuatl warrior whose nose had been sliced off, but fortunately recovered, though somewhat mashed and muddy from having been much trodden upon. The surgeon was sewing it back onto the hole in the soldier's face, using a maguey thorn for a needle and one of his own long hairs for a thread. The replacement looked more hideous than the hole. Then the doctor hastily slathered the nose with a paste of salted honey, and came scurrying to my prisoner.

"Undo those thongs on his legs," he said to a soldier assistant, and to another, "Scoop out from the fire yonder a basin of the hottest coals." Armed Scorpion's stumps began slowly to bleed again, then to spurt, and they were gushing by the time the assistant came bearing a wide, shallow bowl of white-hot embers, over which small flames flickered.

"My lord physician," Cozcatl said helpfully, "here are his feet."

The doctor grunted in exasperation. "Take them away. Feet cannot be stuck back on like blobs of noses." To the wounded man he said, "One at a time or both at once?"

"As you will," Armed Scorpion said indifferently. He had never once cried out or whimpered with pain, and he did not then, as the doctor took one of his stumps in each hand and plunged both their raw ends into the dish of glowing coals. Cozcatl turned and fled the sight. The blood sizzled and made a pink cloud of stinking steam. The flesh crackled and made a blue smoke that was less offensive. Armed Scorpion regarded the process as calmly as did the physician, who lifted the now charred and blackened leg ends out of the coals. The searing had sealed off the slashed vessels, and no more blood flowed. The doctor liberally applied to the stumps a healing salve: beeswax mixed with the yolks of birds' eggs, the juice of alder bark and of the barbasco root. Then he stood up and reported, "The man is in no danger of dying, my lord, but it will be some days before he recovers from the weakness of having lost so much blood."

Nezahualpili said, "Let there be a noble's litter prepared for him. The eminent Armed Scorpion will lead the column of captives." Then he turned to Xococ, regarded him coldly, and said:

"We Acolhua lost many men today, and more will die of their injuries before we see home again. The enemy lost about the same, but the surviving prisoners are almost as many as our surviving warriors. To the number of thousands. Your Revered Speaker Ahuitzotl should be pleased at the work we have done for him and his god. If he and Chimalpopoca of Tlacopan had sent genuine armies of full strength, we might well have gone on to vanquish the entire land of Texcala." He shrugged. "Ah, well. How many captives did your Mexica take?"

Knight Xococ shuffled his feet, coughed, pointed to Armed Scorpion, and mumbled, "My lord, you are looking at the only one. Perhaps the Tecpaneca took a few stragglers, I do not know yet. But of the Mexica"—he motioned at me—"only this yaoquizqui..."

"No longer a yaoquizqui, as you well know," Nezahualpili said tartly. "His first capture makes him an iyac in rank. And this single captive—you heard him say he slew four Acolhua knights today. Let me tell you: Armed Scorpion has never troubled to count his victims of lesser rank than knight. But he has probably accounted for hundreds of Acolhua, Mexica, and Tecpaneca in his time."

Blood Glutton was sufficiently impressed to murmur, "Fogbound is a hero in truth."

"No," I said. "It was not really my sword stroke, but a stroke of fortune, and I could not have done it without Cozcatl, and—"

"But it happened," Nezahualpili said, silencing me. To Xococ he continued, "Your Revered Speaker may wish to reward the young man with something higher than iyac rank. In this engagement he alone has upheld the Mexica reputation for valor and initiative. I suggest that you present him in person to Ahuitzotl, along with a letter which I myself will write."

"As you command, my lord," said Xococ, almost literally kissing the earth. "We are very proud of our Fogbound."

"Then call him by some other name! Now, enough of this loitering about. Get your troops in order, Xococ. I appoint you and them the Swallowers and Swaddlers. Move!"

Xococ took that like a slap in the face, which it was, but he and Blood Glutton obediently went off at a trot. As I have told earlier, the Swaddlers were those who either tied or took charge of the prisoners so that none escaped. The Swallowers went about the whole area of battle and beyond, seeking out and knifing to death those of the wounded who were beyond relief. When that was done, they heaped and burned the bodies, allies and enemies together, each with a chip of jadestone in its mouth or hand.

For a few moments, Nezahualpili and I were alone together. He said, "You have done here today a deed to be proud of—and to be ashamed of. You rendered harmless the one man most to be feared among all our opponents on this field. And you brought a noble knight to an ignoble end. Even when Armed Scorpion reaches the afterworld of heroes, his eternal bliss will have an eternally bitter taste, because all his comrades there will know that he was ludicrously brought down by a callow, shortsighted, common recruit."

"My lord," I said, "I only did what I thought was right."

"As you have done before," he said, and sighed. "Leaving for others the bitter aftertaste. I do not chide you, Mixtli. It was long ago foretold that your tonali was to know the truth about the things of this world, and to make the truth known. I would ask only one thing."

I bowed my head and said, "My lord does not ask anything of a commoner. He commands and is obeyed."

"What I ask cannot be commanded. I entreat you, Mixtli, from now henceforward, to be prudent, even gingerly in your handling of the right and the truth. Such things can cut as cruelly as any obsidian blade. And, like the blade, they can also cut the man who wields them."

He turned abruptly away from me, called to a swift-messenger, and told him, "Put on a green mantle and braid your hair in the manner signifying good news. Take a clean new shield and maquahuitl. Run to Tenochtitlan and, on your way to the palace, run brandishing the shield and sword through as many streets as you can, so the people may rejoice and strew flowers in your path. Let Ahuitzotl know that he has the victory and the prisoners he wanted."

The last few words Nezahualpili did not speak to the messenger, but to himself: "That the life and the death and the very name of Jadestone Doll are now to be forgotten."

* * *

Nezahualpili and his army parted from the rest of us there, to march back the way we all had come. The Mexica and Tecpaneca contingents, plus myself and the long column of prisoners, went directly west on a shorter route to Tenochtitlan: across the pass between the peak of Tlaloctepetl and that of Ixtacciuatl, thence along the southern shore of Lake Texcoco.

It was a slow march, since so many of the wounded had to hobble or, like Armed Scorpion, be carried. But it was not a difficult journey. For one thing, the rain had finally stopped; we enjoyed sunny days and temperate nights. For another, once we had crossed the fairly rugged mountain pass, the march was along the level salt flats bordering the lake, with the serene, whispering waters on our right and the slopes of thick, whispering forests on our left.