War God (3 page)

For the ten days since the inception of the current One-Reed year, there had been rumours that a new cycle of sacrifices was planned, a spectacular festival of blood to appease and strengthen Hummingbird against the possible return of Quetzalcoatl. Guessing the commotion at the pyramid must be connected with this, Tozi decided Coyotl would have to wait a few more moments while she found out. Holding her hand over the pocket where the medicine tubes lay, she wormed forward through the crowd until her face was jammed against the bars.

As usual the pyramid impressed itself upon her as forcefully as a blow to the face. Towering in the midst of the plaza, glowing poisonously in the sun, its four levels were painted respectively green, red, turquoise and yellow. On the summit platform, tall, narrow and dark and seeming to eat up the light that shone down on it, stood Hummingbird’s temple.

Tozi gasped when she saw that Moctezuma himself, dressed in all his finery, was amongst the black-robed priests clustered round the altar in front of the temple. Less surprising was the presence of fifty, she counted them – no, fifty-two! – lean and beautiful young Tlascalan men, daubed with white paint, dressed in paper garments, who were trudging with heavy feet up the steep steps of the northern stairway.

Tozi had seen many deaths in the past seven months, inflicted in many ingenious and horrible ways. Despite all her efforts to stay alive she was constantly afraid she might be snatched aside by the priests and murdered at any moment. Still she could not rid herself of the pain she felt whenever she saw others climbing the pyramid to die, and she gasped as the first young man reached the top of the steps.

At once a drum began to beat.

Four burly priests flung the victim on his back over the killing stone and took position at each of his arms and legs, holding him down tight, stretching his chest. Then, with the jerky, ungainly movements of a puppet, Moctezuma loomed over him, clutching a long obsidian knife that glinted in the sun. Tozi had seen it all before but still she watched, rooted to the spot, as the Great Speaker raised the knife and plunged it to the hilt in the victim’s sternum. He cut upward, urgent but precise. When he found the heart he sliced it vigorously from its moorings, snatched it out amidst fountains of blood, and placed it, still beating, on the brazier in front of Hummingbird’s temple. There was a great hissing and sizzling and a burst of steam and smoke rose up at the top of the pyramid. Then the victim’s body was rolled off the stone and Tozi heard hacking and rending sounds as skilled butcher priests fell on it and amputated the arms and legs for later consumption. She saw the head being carried into the temple to be spitted on the skull rack. Finally the torso was sent rolling and bouncing down the pyramid steps, leaving bloody smears all the way to the plaza below where it would soon be joined in a rising heap by the unwanted remains of all the other docile young men presently climbing the northern stairway.

Tozi knew from seven months of witnessing such scenes that the pile of torsos would be gathered up in wheelbarrows after nightfall and trundled off to feed the wild beasts in Moctezuma’s zoo.

The Mexica were monsters, she thought. So cruel. She hated them! She would never be their docile victim!

But evading them was becoming more difficult.

Three searing beats of pain shook her head, and a burst of flashing lights exploded before her eyes. She clenched her teeth to stop herself crying out.

It wasn’t just that she’d started to be noticed by some of the other prisoners – though that was dangerous enough. The real problem was caring for Coyotl, a huge responsibility that she knew she could not hope to sustain in these conditions. The only solution was to find a way to fade for longer than a ten count without having a massive physical collapse. Then she could get them out of here.

Tozi edged back and took her eyes off the pyramid, distracted for a moment by the way the morning sun poured through the bamboo prison bars creating stripes of deep shadow and stripes of intense, brilliant light, filled with swirling motes of dust. Suddenly she thought she saw the tall, beautiful woman again, gliding through the haze like a ghost. She blinked and the woman was gone.

Who are you
? thought Tozi.
Are you
a witch like me?
She felt the cool, packed earth of the floor under her feet and sensed the warmth and odours of the other prisoners all around her. Then, like an evil spirit, a breeze smelling of blood blew up out of the southeast and the screams of Moctezuma’s next victim filled the air.

Normally the high priest wielded the obsidian knife, and Moctezuma would not become involved except on the most important State occasions. It followed that only something very significant could explain his presence here this morning.

With a shudder Tozi turned her back on the pyramid and moved swiftly through the crowd, disturbing no one, to the place where she had left Coyotl.

Pepillo was halfway along the larger of the two piers jutting out into Santiago Harbour. He felt stunned and confused by the bustle and the noise. Every berth on both sides of the pier was filled with carracks, caravels and brigantines, and every ship was loading supplies at a feverish, almost frantic, pace – bags of cassava, barrels of wine and water, barrels of salt pork and dried fish, live pigs squealing and protesting, horses, guns, troops of grim-looking men …

A drunken sailor with the face of an ape made a sudden grab for one of the two huge leather bags Pepillo was carrying. He dodged back and the sailor lost his balance and fell heavily to the cobbles. ‘You little whoreson,’ he roared, ‘I’m going to kill you for that.’

‘For what?’ Pepillo squeaked, backing away, still clutching the bags.

With horrible grunts the sailor levered himself onto one knee, struggled upright and lurched forward with his hands outstretched. Pepillo was already running. He heard footsteps closing rapidly behind him, then a sudden change in rhythm, and as he turned to look back over his shoulder he saw the drunk stumble, lose his balance and tumble to the cobbles again. There were hoots of derision, jeers and roars of laughter from the growing crowd of onlookers and the sailor glared up in fury at Pepillo.

Short, small-boned and delicately built for his fourteen years, Pepillo kept hoping for a growth spurt that would make him tall, robust and formidable. Now, he thought, as the sailor spat curses at him, would be an excellent moment to gain a span or two in height, and an arroba or two of solid muscle in weight. It would also be good if his hands doubled in size and quadrupled in strength in the process. He would not object to facial hair, and felt that a beard would endow him with an air of authority.

His arms aching, his fingers stiff, Pepillo hurried on, weaving through the thick crowds thronging the pier until his drunken attacker was lost from sight. Only when he was sure he was not pursued did he allow himself to set down the two enormously heavy bags. They clunked and clanged as though they were filled with hammers, knives and horseshoes.

How strange
, Pepillo thought. It was not his business to wonder why his new master would travel with more metal than a blacksmith, but for the twentieth time that morning he had to suppress an urge to open the bags and take a look.

It was just one of the mysteries that had exploded into his life after Matins when he had been informed he would be leaving the monastery to serve a friar who was not known to him, a certain Father Gaspar Muñoz who had arrived that night from the Dominican mission in Hispaniola. There had been some sort of dispute with Customs officials, and after it Father Muñoz had gone directly to another vessel waiting in the harbour, a hundred-ton carrack named the
Santa María de la Concepción
. Although Pepillo could not yet really believe his good luck, it seemed he and the Father were to sail in this vessel to bring the Christian faith to certain New Lands recently discovered lying to the west. Pepillo was to present himself to Muñoz on board ship, after first passing the Customs House and collecting four leather bags, the good Father’s personal belongings that had been detained there.

Pepillo flexed his fingers and looked at the bags with hatred before he picked them up again. He hadn’t been able to carry all four at once, so there were two more exactly like them he would have to return for when these were delivered.

As he walked he scanned the dockside through the milling, noisy, crowd. There was no breeze, and a cloying smell of fish, decay and excrement clung thick in the muggy morning air. Above, in the cloudless blue sky, seabirds wheeled and shrieked. There were sailors and soldiers everywhere carrying sacks of supplies, tools, weapons. Gruff Castilian voices shouted abuse, instructions, directions.

Pepillo came to a big three-masted carrack that loomed to his left like the wall of a fortress. Five massive cavalry horses were being led up a rickety gangplank onto the deck, where a noble lord, dressed out in great finery, with a mane of blond hair falling to his shoulders, was directing operations. Pepillo squinted to read the ship’s faded nameplate:
San Sebastián.
Then, beyond it on the right, almost at the end of the pier, he spotted another even larger carrack with jibs and derricks set up all around it and teams of men loading supplies. Pepillo walked closer. This ship had a high aftcastle and the new design of low-slung forecastle for better manoeuvrability against the wind. Another few steps and he made out the name:
Santa María de la Concepción.

A gangplank sloped up to the deck right in front of him. With trepidation, holding his master’s bags tight, Pepillo stepped on to it.

‘Who are you? What do you think you’re doing here?’

‘I’m … I’m …’

‘Tell me your business here!’

‘I’m … I’m …’

‘You’re a puking dog breath.’

Pepillo didn’t know whether he should laugh or take offence. The boy he confronted was a year or two older than him, at least a foot taller, much broader across the chest and made all the more formidable by a completely shaven, gleaming head. He was also black as tar from head to toe.

Pepillo had encountered Negroes before, but they’d all been slaves. This one didn’t behave like a slave and was much too big to fight, so he forced a laugh. ‘OK, yeah, great,’ he said. He pretended to wipe tears of mirth from his eyes. ‘Very funny …’ He held out his hand: ‘The name’s Pepillo …’ He laughed. ‘Pepillo Dogbreath!’ Another laugh. ‘And you are?’

‘Melchior,’ said the other boy. He ignored the proffered hand.

‘Melchior,’ repeated Pepillo. ‘Right. Good to meet you.’ He awkwardly withdrew his hand: ‘Look … You asked me my business here and it’s very simple. I’m trying to find my master’s quarters.’ He indicated the two large leather bags he’d been lugging on board the
Santa María de la Concepción
when Melchior had confronted him. He’d dumped them on deck at the end of the gangplank, right below the forecastle. ‘My master’s belongings,’ Pepillo explained. ‘He came in from Hispaniola this morning and they were held up in the Customs House. I’m supposed to bring them to his cabin …’

An angry frown contorted Melchior’s face. There was something ferocious about this frown. Something hateful. Perhaps even something frightening. ‘This master of yours,’ he spat. ‘He have a name?’

‘Father Gaspar Muñoz.’

‘Muñoz!’ The frowned deepened, became a grimace.

‘Yes, Muñoz. You know him?’

‘He got stick legs, this Muñoz? Like a crow? He got a little fat belly? How about his front teeth? Look like he been sucking too hard on something he shouldn’t?’

Pepillo giggled at the crude image: ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen my master before.’

‘Huh?’

‘I was assigned to him this morning and—’

‘—Assigned? Assigned you say? That’s a pretty word …’

‘I was sent straight to the Customs House for his bags. There’s two more I still have to fetch …’

A shadow distracted Pepillo and he glanced up to see a heavy brass cannon soaring overhead in a cat’s cradle of ropes. With raucous shouts, and much squealing of pulleys, a gang of sailors manoeuvred it into the deep shadows of the hold.

‘That’s one of the lombards,’ said Melchior. A note of pride crept into his voice: ‘We’ve got three of them with the fleet. You can settle a lot of arguments with guns like that.’

‘Are we expecting a lot of arguments?’

‘Are you kidding?’ Melchior sneered. ‘After what happened last year?’

Pepillo decided not to bluff: ‘
What
happened last year?’

‘The Córdoba expedition?’

Pepillo shrugged. It meant nothing to him.

‘Hernandez de Córdoba led a fleet of three ships to explore the New Lands, see what trade was to be had there and bring the word of Christ to the Indians. He had a hundred and ten men with him. I was one of them.’ Melchior paused: ‘Seventy of us got killed.’ Another pause: ‘Seventy! Córdoba himself died of his wounds and we barely had enough hands on deck to sail back. It’s been the talk of Santiago ever since. How can you not know anything about it?’