Casca 10: The Conquistador (11 page)

"I am the Quetza!" he cried. Then he put his hands on both sides of his chest and pushed the edges of the wound together, closing the gaping hole.

Moctezuma wept as he saw the wound close and rivulets of blood run down the messenger's chest to flow onto the stones and drip down the steps. Above the roar of the storm, he saw Casca raise his arms to the heavens and cry out in pain and anguish.

"I, Casca.
I am the Quetza!"

Moctezuma tried to cover his ears but couldn't as the last words
tore at the very fabric of his soul. The man on the altar, his body burning with the green fire, screamed again and drowned out the thunder of the skies with his words:

"I am God!"

Moctezuma fainted. When he awoke, his guards were carrying him in a litter back to his palace. When he questioned them as to what they had seen that night, they looked at him in confusion, not knowing what was wanted from them. They could only answer honestly. "We saw nothing, our lord, only you and the strange man sitting on the altar of the sun. You watched him for a few minutes and then fainted. That is all we saw, nothing more save the storm."

Moctezuma never returned to the City of the Gods. That now belonged to the scarred one and his magic. Now more than ever, he feared those from the sea. What should he do? What could he do? They were coming. He could not keep them away forever. They were coming for him even now.

Cortes questioned his new allies about the disappearance of his man known as Carlos Romano. They knew nothing. There had been rumors that one such as he had been seen heading west across the trails leading to the high deserts. But that was all. The subjects of the Aztecs were not speaking. A silence had fallen between them and their subject and vassal tribes.

Cortes had the feeling that Romano was up to something, but what it could be he couldn't even guess at. One man was not important enough to cause him to have a major confrontation with the Aztecs. Whatever Romano was up to, he had a feeling it would not be to the advantage of the Indians. There was an odd quality about the man. Just what it was, he couldn't put into words, but there was definitely something.

Cortes shook the thought off. He had more pressing matters to worry over than the whereabouts of one man. He had an entire country to conquer for the glory of Spain and himself.

Cortes had spent the last months fortifying his new city of Vera Cruz to make it secure from attack and building alliances among his neighbors. Soon it would be time to move against the city of the Mexicas. Then he would not be denied his meeting with the king of the Aztecs.

It was not long after the nephews of Moctezuma had left that the Cempolans asked Cortes for help in destroying the Culhuan, who were one of the few willing vassals of the Aztecs. They had a garrison at Tizapantzinco, a fortress built on a rocky butt near a river on the border between the lands of the Totonacs and those of the Cempolans.

When the Culhuans there found the countryside in revolt and their tax collectors attacked, they sent their warriors out in strength, raiding the villages and towns within their reach, putting them all to the torch and taking captives for the altars. Cortes decided that it would be good to reinforce his new allies' faith in him, and so he agreed to go with them the two days' journey, taking with him a hundred foot soldiers and fifty horses.

When they reached the base of the butt, he held his Spaniards back, letting the Cempolans go out first to show themselves and hurl challenges at the Culhuans, who reacted predictably, sallying out in full strength to destroy the impudent Cempolans. Once they were committed and fully exposed, Cortes set loose his Spaniards on them, his cavalry cutting off the Culhuans from their city. The natives panicked when they saw the Spaniards; they had never laid eyes on white men or horses before. They broke and ran for the trees and river with the Cempolans hot on their trail. Cortes took four of his officers and climbed the butt to the gates of Tizapantzinco, holding it with no difficulty until the main force of Cempolans and Spaniards could enter.

He turned the city over to his allies after making them promise not to hurt the civilians there. They were to disarm their prisoners and then set them free. This was a strange thing for the Indians to do, as they never released captives, but they obeyed his wishes. As usual, Cortes had reasons for everything he did. He wanted the survivors of the Culhuan force to go out into the countryside and spread his fame. They would let the world of the Aztecs know that he was not to be resisted. At the same time, he would gain the support of several other tribes, including those of the other Culhuan cities.

One other bit of good news awaited his return to Vera Cruz. A friend of his from Cuba had arrived with a caravel carrying sixty good soldiers and nine horses, which were worth more than fifty men each because of the effect they had on the Indians.

Upon his return, he called for a meeting of his town leaders, the alcaldes and regidores. The treasure they had acquired to this date was brought into the square of the City of the True Cross and displayed for all to see. Besides the small things of cotton and feather works, which had no real value other than their craftsmanship, the gold and silver they had gained was valued at twenty-seven thousand ducats.

It was time for him to renew the loyalty of his men and buy the favor of his king. He told the council to distribute the wealth among the men after deducting the king's fifth share and then said that he would take only his fair share as captain general of the expedition, not deducting at this time his costs for the ships and supplies he'd had to pay for. He wanted his men to have their shares in full so that they might pay off any debts they had accrued in order to join his forces.

Among the king's share were sent the two disks of gold and silver that had been given to him by Tuedilli. Also on the list was a necklace of gold with eighty-three small emeralds set in it and another of four twisted strands of gold with one hundred and two rubies and a hundred and seventy-two emeralds. These and many other items, some of gold or silver, others of pearls and gems, and many articles of native clothing that showed the incredibly beautiful work of the Indian craftsmen in cloth and feathers were all included on the list.

As he prepared his gifts, there were many men being held by the Cempolans as sacrifices. Even he had not been able to halt their practices completely and was wise enough to wait and try to convince them through other arguments later. The best he could do was to get the Cempolans to release four of the sacrifices to his custody and send them along with the treasure to Spain under the watchful eyes of two trusted deputies, Alonso de Ortocarrero and Francisco de Montejo. They carried the treasure and his letter, requesting his highness to proclaim officially that Cortes was, in the king's name, to be governor of the lands he had delivered to the throne of Spain.

The ship left Vera Cruz on July 26, 1519, making certain they avoided Havana and the power of Diego Velasquez. Cortes's old enemy, who was lieutenant governor of Cuba, would have taken the ship and gained the credit for winning the treasure for himself.

Even in the camp of Cortes, there were some who were more loyal to Diego than they were to Cortes and attempted to spread sedition, saying that Cortes had made himself leader by bribes and trickery and that Diego was the legitimate authority of the new lands, just as he was of Cuba.

Cortes responded quickly, arresting the ringleaders and holding them prisoner on board ship. Some time later, when he thought things had calmed down a bit, he released them. But they started to give him trouble again. Cortes discovered that they were plotting to seize a brigantine, kill its master, and sail to Cuba to inform Diego Velasquez of what Cortes was attempting to do and of the treasure ship he had sent to Spain.

For the first time, Cortes had to act against his own men. After a quick trial, he hanged Juan Escudero and the pilot Diego Cermeno and had several others whipped. These actions did nothing to reduce the respect that his men held for him, for men of strength respect strength.

After this, he knew that it was time for him to move on again so that there would be less time for any of them to consider such treason again. He would wait no longer; it was time to enter the heartland of the Aztecs.

He was concerned about the men he would have to leave behind to garrison Vera Cruz. When he was not there, who could tell what would happen to them or the actions they might be seduced into taking by the fearful and weak of spirit? From history, he recalled the actions of Alexander when he landed on the coast of Persia. He burned his ships, leaving his men no choice but to go forward and in the process found a great empire.

After removing their guns, sails, ropes, and anything else that could be of use, he sank his ships. There was some grumbling over this, but he soothed their feelings with stories of the prizes they
would take, which would make them all as rich as princes. The words were sweet, and the Spaniards had no choice in the matter. For now they had no way to return, and without Cortes's leadership and influence over the Indians, they knew that their chances of survival would be reduced severely. They would go with him all the way to the City of Mexico and beyond.

He left Vera Cruz to the care of Pedro de Ircio, who owed his life to his captain. Pedro would be secure with his men at hand and the fifty thousand warriors he could draw upon from his Indian allies.

Cortes returned to Cempola. When he left this time, he had convinced their king to cast down his idols and take up the true cross as his symbol, promising him that if they did this, they would have his continued support against the Aztecs, although he might remove that support if they did not. Tazcamili gave him a thousand men as porters and several hostages of noble blood as tokens of his good faith, which Cortes willingly accepted. The porters would be used to haul the heavy guns and provisions, leaving his men with little to wear them down, save their personal weapons and armor.

After giving Cempola the new name of Sevilla, he began his march to Mexico, leading four hundred Spaniards, fifteen horses, three small guns, and three hundred Indian warriors, including several nobles.

The march had begun. Once they left the fertile lands of the coast behind, they entered a barren and sterile land where the water was bad, tasting of strong salts. For three days they had to pass through this region to reach the mountain valley of Zacotlan, a vassal state of Moctezuma ruled over by Olintetl, a noble lord who thought that the Spaniards must be friends of his master. To honor the occasion of their arrival, he sacrificed fifty men, an act which the Spaniards were hard put not to stop with some killing of their own. From the lord Olintetl, Cortes learned that there were regular garrisons of five thousand warriors spread out in stations all the way to Tenochtitlan, and Moctezuma had thirty vassal lords, each of whom had one hundred thousand warriors at his command and countless lesser lords such as himself who could muster only twenty or thirty thousand. Each year they sacrificed twenty thousand men and women, a fact he boasted of, for it proved the piety of the Aztecs. At special times it could go as high as fifty thousand.

Cortes had known that Moctezuma was a great king, but not to this extent. If Olintetl was telling the truth, and there was no reason to believe otherwise, the Aztecs could field three million warriors, a larger army than even the greatest kings of Europe could command. If he had been a lesser man, he would have turned back, satisfied with his gains; but he was committed, and now he would use a lesson not from Alexander but from Caesar in order to win. He would divide and conquer, trusting, as he had with the Cempolans, that there were still many more of the subject states that could be brought over to his side with the promise of independence and aid – that and the fact that the communications were so poor in a land with no horses. He could strike and be at the next place before word of his actions could be acted on by the enemy.

He moved on, leaving Olintetl thinking that he was their good friend, and rapidly went into action, taking on first the Tlaxcalans, one of the few independent neighbors of the Aztecs who ruled themselves, paying no tribute to any lords but their own. If he could beat them, he would have a much better chance of making the lesser tribes his willing partners.

It was a hard fight in which he lost two horses and had a number of his men wounded, but once again the Good Lord was with them and no Spaniards died in battle. He wondered how long his luck could hold. The Cempolans and his other allies fought bravely. It was very doubtful that the Spaniards could have won
on their own. By the first week of September, they had defeated the Tlaxcalan armies, who had boasted that they would sacrifice the strangers to their gods and feast on "heavenly flesh," as they called human meat. Possibly they might have dined on the Castilians, if not for the cannon and the horses, which had their usual effect on the savages.

In the last battle, The Tlaxcalans' pride and arrogance were nearly overbearing, for they mocked the Spaniards and their allies, saying: "What fools and contemptible men are these, who threaten us without knowing our strength, who dare to come to our lands without our permission and against our will." When the Tlaxcalans saw that the Spanish were fatigued, they laughed and made sport, saying: "Let them rest, for we shall have time to take and tie them. Send them food, lest they claim they were weak from hunger as the reason that we were able to take them." And they did send food to their enemy, who consumed it eagerly.

The Tlaxcalans, as with all the Indians of the new lands, made at least one critical error in their fighting techniques. The Indians fought to take captives for their altars. There was not as much glory in killing a man as in taking him alive. The Spanish and their allies were not bothered by such conventions. They killed and killed only, as Cortes ordered them.

The Tlaxcalans were well equipped with shields and armor of wood and leather, spears and lances, bows and arrows, the flint or obsidian-lined macama, and swords of hard wood. They painted their faces bright scarlet, looking like red-faced, feathered devils.

The fighting lasted over a week, and every day at the same time the Tlaxcalans would send food to their enemy. The last time, they also sent spies with the servants who delivered the food. These were sent back to their masters with their hands cut off.

Every day it was the turn of a different Tiaxcalan army to do battle with the Spanish, and every day it was the same result. The enemy still held the field, and they had lost many more than the strangers. If the Tlaxcalans had used their forces in concert instead of piecemeal, they would have had little trouble eliminating the invaders. But each detachment was under the command of its own chieftain who did not wish to share his glory with any other.

They bled themselves dry and accomplished nothing until superstitious fear began to ride their thoughts, growing greater in their minds with each failure until they began to believe that their gods had deserted them. Once this happened, it was only a matter of days before messengers came to the Spanish camp, pleading for a treaty in which most of the Tlaxcalan cities would swear to be the good and great friends of the Spaniards and their king.

Cortes granted this, as he did not wish to tie up his men in fighting the Tlaxcalans. They would be needed later in Mexico. He made his treaty and gained another two thousand porters and a thousand warriors to add to his force. After their treaty, Cortes used his tactic of gentle treatment to make them into allies. As with most savages, once it was proved who
were their better, they readily accepted whoever sat upon their necks as their lords.

Cortes's confidence was not shared by all his men, who, once they saw the tenacity of the Tlaxcalans and their numbers, began to grumble, afraid that they would never get back alive. The rumors began to spread until Cortes had to draw his company together away from the Indians and speak to them.