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Authors: Simon Levack

BOOK: Shadow of the Lords
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‘They do.' I picked up his train of thought. ‘They'd be expecting a regiment to come after them, and they'd know the warriors would chop the whole forest down if they had to before they stopped looking. So they can't be hiding here.' When I saw the solution, I had to suppress a grin: it was so elegant I almost believed it myself. ‘On the other hand, they can't have run very far, can they? Not with one of them carrying the other. So …'
The captain twisted his sword threateningly. The shards of obsidian sunk in its shaft flashed as the sunlight caught them,
and his own eyes glittered as he watched them. When he spoke he seemed to be talking to the weapon, as though reassuring it that it would have work to do yet.
‘So what you are telling me is that the men we're after can't be running away and they can't be hiding either. What, then? They just vanished? Are they sorcerers? Did they turn themselves into moles and burrow into the soil? Are they down there now, laughing at us?'
He drove the blunt end of the shaft into the ground. It struck the earth with a ‘thump' that seemed to reverberate in the open field's empty silence, and when he let the weapon go, it stood upright unsupported.
‘Somebody,' he reminded me, ‘is going to pay for all this. If these men are lost …'
‘They're not sorcerers,' I assured him hastily. ‘I didn't say they weren't hiding. I just said they would not be hiding out here.' I glanced quickly at Handy again: he was looking at his feet, no doubt wondering whether he had been right to take my side.
I took a deep breath. I might live or die by my next few words. But I saw what I had to do. I could not fight the Otomies, nor could I run away from them. I had to take them somewhere where they could not hurt me no matter how angry and frustrated they got and where I would not need legs like a roadrunner's to outpace them. I had to lure them on to my own ground. I thought wistfully of the city I could not see, out on the lake, hidden by the tall rushes. I imagined its vast, bustling crowds, its networks of narrow streets and canals, the baffling mazes of its marketplaces, the refined manners of its people, most of whom could admire a man like the captain from afar but would go out of their way to avoid talking to him. I could have lost the warriors there in no time.
My own city was beyond my reach, but there were others.
‘Where's the nearest large town?' I asked innocently.
 
The captain got Fox to draw a rough map in the dirt with the point of his harpoon.
‘Say this is Chapultepec,' he began, digging a small hole.
‘Don't bother putting the little villages in,' I said helpfully. ‘They wouldn't go near those. Everybody knows everybody else, so they'd spot strangers straight away, and they'd tell you about them as soon as you asked just to get rid of you. Telpochtli and the boy would know that.' I knew there was no point in my trying to hide in a village either, for the same reason.
Fox glowered at me. ‘Right. Here's the lake …'
‘I think the shoreline should come out further west than that …'
‘Shut up. This is a map, not a work of bloody art. How far could they have gone? I need to know how big an area to cover.
I thought about that: the bigger the better, as far as I was concerned, since it meant the Otomies would have to divide themselves between more towns. ‘Hard to say …'
‘You told us they rested up the first night and we know one of them was too lame to walk.' The captain's voice was subdued, for him. He was clearly thinking about how he was going to keep control over his men if he had to disperse them widely over the countryside. ‘Even if he was walking by yesterday morning he won't have been going very fast. He won't be up for a climb either, so we can forget anywhere very high up. They certainly haven't left the valley.'
Fox drove his harpoon repeatedly into the ground, reciting the name of a town with every blow. ‘Coyoacan, Mixcoa, Atlacuihuayan, Popotla, Tlacopan, Otoncalpolco, Azcatpotzalco …'
‘We have to search all of them?' the captain asked in a disgusted voice.
‘I would,' I said, ‘but if you go into any of them mob handed you'll just attract attention and frighten your quarry off. Send a couple of men to each …'
He looked at me suspiciously. ‘And if you were our runaways, which town would you pick?'
‘The biggest,' I said honestly.
‘Right.' He looked briefly down at Fox's map. ‘You and I are off to Tlacopan, then. They,' he added with a glance at Handy and the steward, ‘can come with us. So can Fox. The rest of you split up how you like: two to each town and a couple to stay here in reserve. Let's go!'
S
o we set off for Tlacopan – the captain, Fox, Handy, the steward and I.
It was going to take us the best part of the afternoon to reach it, but as I kept assuring my companions, it was the largest and most important town on the western side of the valley, and so easily the best prospect as our quarry's hiding place.
Most of the journey was undertaken in silence. We had little to say to each other in any case, and every reason to keep our voices down. Although we avoided towns and there were not many people about in the fields, no part of the valley was ever quite empty and there was always the possibility that rumours of our approach would run ahead of us. It did not help that we all so obviously came from the great city at the centre of the lake.
The people who lived in these parts, the Tepanecs, were not barbarians. They spoke our language, and we thought of them as allies. Their ancestors had sprung from the womb of the World at the Seven Caves at the same time as ours. However, that did not mean they loved us.
Once, long before, the Aztecs had been the subjects of a Tepanec city, Azcapotzalco, which in those days had been so populous that it was known as the Anthill. It had been my master's father, the great Lord Tlacaelel, who had persuaded
the Aztecs to rise against their masters, and when the revolt was over the city of Mexico had been freed and Azcapotzalco reduced to a small tributary town whose only claim to distinction was a big slave market.
Only one Tepanec city had sided with the Aztecs in the revolt. As a result of its help, Tlacopan was grudgingly admitted into an alliance with Mexico, but the Aztecs did not treat the Tepanecs as equals. Tlacopan got the smallest share of the spoils of war, and our Emperor treated its king as a subject in all but name. There were plenty of people living on the western side of the lake who had grown up with stories from their fathers and grandfathers of how Tepanecs had once ruled the World and made even the Emperor of Mexico do their bidding. Who could blame them if, from time to time – such as when they visited Mexico during one of the great festivals, when the tribute was distributed, and saw how meagre their shares were in comparison with the Aztecs' – they wondered how it might be if the old order were restored?
‘So watch what you say and who you say it to,' growled the captain, reminding us all of this history. ‘These people won't try to kill you on sight, but if they see a chance to put one over on you, they'll grab it!'
He set a brisk pace, driving us towards the town at a steady trot during the warmest part of the day. He barely broke into a sweat, despite being clad in quilted cotton from head to foot, and if Fox was finding the going any harder he was not about to show it. Handy, used to hard work in the fields in all weathers, ran on without complaint, the effort he was making showing only on his glistening brow and in the firm, determined set of his jaw.
As for me, I had been trained to manage feats of endurance and bear great pain without a murmur. In my time as a priest, I had been pierced all over with maguey spines, had slit open
my tongue and drawn ropes through it, had bathed naked in the lake at midnight and had fasted till I was faint with hunger. I ran now until my thighs and calves burned like raw flesh, my chest felt too weak even for shallow gasps and my tongue was a strip of dried meat dangling limply in my parched mouth, like a freshly skinned pelt hung up in the Sun. Then I kept running, with my discomfort set aside, my legs left to work by themselves, and the knowledge that when I was allowed to rest, that was when the real agony would set in.
Not long afterwards, the steward fell over.
‘I don't believe this!' the captain roared. He turned back, still running, towards the gasping, twitching heap by the roadside. ‘Don't either of you sit down!' he warned Handy and me as he passed us. ‘We'll be off again as soon as he's back on his feet. What's the matter with you?'
Handy was doubled over, trying to massage some life back into his legs, while I kept mine straight in an effort to stop them buckling at the knee. ‘He hasn't done this for a few years,' I offered, between deep, painful breaths. ‘Not really part of his duties now.'
‘And he calls himself a warrior? Can't stand a man who lets himself go soft. Come on, you, up!'
I felt dizzy, as if I had taken a very mild dose of sacred mushrooms. It made the spectacle of the mighty, one-eyed warrior jabbing my master's steward roughly with his foot seem all the more unreal. Part of me wanted to summon up the last of my breath to cheer the captain on and urge him to kick the fallen man harder. The rest of me felt something like awe. Here was my tormentor, the Chief Minister's steward, a man who treated me worse than a dog, suddenly made another man's helpless victim. The sight made me wonder what the Otomi might do to a mere slave, if he thought he had cause.
‘Can't go on,' the steward gasped. ‘Have to rest.' When he looked up at the captain his face was puce.
‘Bugger.' The captain pivoted sharply on one foot and kicked a stone across the road with the other, no doubt wishing it was the steward's head. ‘Nearly there, too!'
His brutal, ravaged face swung in my direction. I blinked the sweat out of my eyes and turned to follow his gaze.
I had been too caught up with putting one foot in front of the other to take much notice of the countryside, but now I saw that we were leaving the open fields. Just ahead of us the road was flanked by a long, low wall. Plum trees reached over it with naked, frost-stripped boughs. I glimpsed a house deep within the orchard, its whitewashed walls gleaming behind the dark cage-work of the branches.
Taller trees reared up beyond the orchard, the green of cypress and fir catching the sunlight and flashing brilliantly among the bare black skeletons of oak and ash. Farther away still, towering over the tallest of the trees, were the squared-off humps of Tlacopan's pyramids.
‘We've made good time, you know,' I told the captain. ‘It won't hurt to rest a while.'
He spared a glance for the steward, who had now made it on to his hands and knees, although the sound of his breathing reminded me of an angry rattlesnake. ‘And what then?'
‘You could send me on ahead,' I suggested hopefully. By now, I thought, when the heat of the afternoon was over, the townspeople would have come out of their houses and the place would be bustling again. There would not be much of a crowd compared with the vast numbers that filled Mexico's sacred precincts during a festival, but there should still be plenty of opportunities for an undistinguished-looking slave to slip quietly out of sight.
The captain snorted derisively. ‘No chance! You think
you're leaving me in charge of this?' His foot twitched in the steward's direction again. ‘No, I'll tell you what we'll do. Fox and I will go on ahead. We'll start making some discreet enquiries in the marketplace.' The mobile half of his face grinned, showing a broken row of blackened teeth. Plainly he was looking forward to scaring information out of Tepanecs. I found this strangely reassuring: this man would have no trouble persuading people to talk, but getting them to tell the truth would be entirely beyond him.
‘You three will follow us. We'll meet up in the sacred precinct, under that temple.' He gestured with his ugly sword towards the tall pyramid beyond the trees. ‘Be there before nightfall.' Then, waving the weapon in my direction, he added softly: ‘I don't have to tell you what will happen if you're not!'
 
Handy and I watched the two warriors as they trotted away to bring terror and uproar to Tlacopan.
The big commoner let out a long sigh. ‘It's a relief to get rid of those two, isn't it? If that captain of theirs had made us run any further I'd be in the same state as him!'
We both glanced behind us, towards where the steward was slowly getting to his feet.
‘He probably runs twice around the lake before dawn,' I said, with a nod towards the cloud of dust the warriors had kicked up. ‘Now, I don't know about you, Handy, but I think I'm getting too old for this sort of sport! Why don't we rest here for a while and then see if the Tepanecs can find us something to eat?'
I gathered from the smile that began to form on Handy's face that he had no more enthusiasm for what we were up to than I did. ‘Now there's an idea,' he replied. ‘Come to think of it, one of my brothers-in-law was here once, and he told me there was an old woman in the corner of the marketplace
who sold the best gophers in chilli sauce he'd ever tasted.'
The hopeful look on his face froze at the sound of the steward's voice.
‘Rest? Eat? What are you two talking about?'
The Prick was breathing heavily and his face was still dark, but he was on his feet and no longer the wreck of a man the Otomi captain had been kicking a little while earlier. As he glowered impatiently at us both I realized that he must have feigned his exhaustion, at least in part. His was not the sort of pride that would flinch at a childish trick like that. He had felt humiliated and belittled by the Otomi, but had been prepared to suffer a little more abuse just to get rid of him. Now his tormentor was gone, and he was his own man again, and free to show it in the only way he knew how.
‘Thought you were going to bunk off, did you, Yaotl? Thought you'd have a nice, quiet afternoon, taking your ease in the shade of the fruit trees before a gentle stroll into Tlacopan and maybe a light snack to round off the day? Is that what you thought?' He took two steps towards me and thrust his face close to mine. Out of the corners of my eyes I could see his fists balling, as if he was about to hit me, although they remained at his sides, no doubt because Handy was there. The commoner was not my master's possession, and if he chose to intervene the steward could not be sure of winning either the fight or the court case that would follow.
‘We'll see what Lord Feathered in Black has to say about your idea of obedience later,' the steward crooned, ‘but first I think we'd better make a start, hadn't we? Why don't we go to the market, like your friend here said, and try asking a few questions?'
I hung my head submissively. ‘All right,' I mumbled, ‘you're in charge.'
I comforted myself by reflecting that the steward had no
more chance than the Otomies of getting a useful answer out of anyone here. On the other hand, I thought gloomily, as I trudged after him along the road leading into the centre of the town, I still had no idea how I was going to get away.
Get away I must, though. As I walked, my son's knife bounced against my hip, reminding me that I had urgent business elsewhere.
 
To an Aztec born and raised in Mexico, Tlacopan was a strange place.
Mexico was a city of whitewashed adobe houses and courtyards, more than anyone had ever been able to count, crammed together so tightly that from the outside it was hard to tell one from another, and almost every one of them was served by a canal. We spent so much of our lives on the water that some of our children learned to paddle a canoe before they could walk. Apart from the great, broad avenues that spread out from the Heart of the World in each of the Four Directions, most of our roads were narrow paths. Our fields lay on the outskirts of the city, on artificial islands made of mud dredged from the bottom of the lake, and they throbbed with activity all year round because their permanently damp soil could bear fruit even at the height of the dry season.
How different were the towns on the mainland! We found ourselves sauntering along wide, dusty streets, between expansive plots that would be full of maize, amaranth, beans, squash, sage or chillies by the end of summer but which now lay largely empty. In the middle of each plot stood a house, its walls stouter than we were used to, since the people here had no bridges they could pull up in the event of an attack.
‘What's that smell?' Handy wrinkled his nose. ‘Don't they empty their privies around here?'
‘What do you expect?' the steward rasped. ‘Barbarian scum!'
‘They can't help it,' I said indulgently. ‘They don't have boats to take it away, like us. They have to spread it straight on to the fields or carry it all the way down to the lake.'
The steward made a dismissive noise in the back of his throat.
I found myself looking anxiously at the few people we passed, and then at my companions, in case the steward's obvious contempt for the locals somehow showed. I need not have worried, however, since after a day wandering around in the marshes, we looked less like the all-conquering masters of the One World than a little party of bedraggled peasants.
‘I suppose the market must be near the sacred precinct,' the steward said. ‘So we'll make for that pyramid.' He gestured towards the tallest building in Tlacopan, which now reared up above the trees in front of us. We would be in its shadow soon.
‘And what then?' Handy asked.
‘We do what we were told, of course – ask around, find out if the man and boy have been seen. It wouldn't hurt to get to them before the Otomi does!'
Handy looked enquiringly at me. I returned his gaze impassively. So far as I knew my son had never been near Tlacopan. If the steward wanted to waste his time searching for him here, that was fine by me.

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