I was just about to give the order for us four mounted men to charge, with our Aztéca behind us, when Uno reached from his horse to clutch my shoulder and say, "Your pardon, John British, if I presume to give you a bit of advice."
"By Huitztli, man!" I snarled. "This is no time to—"
He overrode me, "Best I do it now, Cap'n, while I have life to speak and you to hear."
"Get on, then! Say it!"
"Me, I would not know one end of a harquebus from the other, but I have shipped along of His Majesty's marine soldiers a time or two, and seen them in action. What I mean, they do not all fire at once, as your men did. They form up in three ranks, parallel. The first rank fires, then falls back while the second rank aims. The second rank fires and falls back while the third rank aims. By the time the third rank has fired, the first has reloaded and is ready to fire again."
There were goose words in that speech, but I readily comprehended the sense of it, and said:
"I humbly ask your pardon, Señor Uno. Forgive my having snapped at you. The advice is sound—and welcome—and I will heed it ever after this day. I kiss the earth to that. Now, señores, Nochéztli..." I swept my sword arm to start the Aztéca running. "If you fall, fall forward!"
XXIX
The most memorable aspect of any battle—and, having now experienced many of them, I can say this with authority—is its dizzying commotion and confusion. But of this one, my first major engagement with the enemy, I do retain a few memories more distinct.
As we four mounted men pounded across the open ground and into the affray, only a few stray lead balls flew harmlessly past us, because the Spanish soldiers were very much occupied with the Yaki among them. Then, as we new assailants also closed with them, I vividly remember the sounds of that encounter—not so much the clashing of arms, but the clamor of voices. I and Nochéztli and all the Aztéca who followed us were uttering the traditional cries of various wild animals. But the Spaniards were shouting the name of their war santo—"¡Por Santiago!"—and, to my surprise, our own two white men, Uno and Dos, were apparently doing the same. They roared what sounded to me like this: "For Harry and Saint George!" though I had never, even in my Christian-schooling days, heard of any santos named Harry and George.
There were other noises from the distance, from inside the town—some sharp as thunderclaps, others mere muted thumps—the burstings of the clay-ball granadas being employed by our women warriors. Doubtless the Spanish officers would have liked to detach some of their men from the struggle here at the town's edge, and send them to deal with those inexplicable thunders. But they had no hope of doing that, because, right here, their men were by now outnumbered and fighting for their lives. Neither their fighting nor their lives lasted very long.
If there are such beings as Saints Harry and George, they lent their followers greater strength of arm than Santiago did to his. Uno and Dos, though unsteadied by saddles and stirrups, slashed left and right from atop their mounts, as tirelessly, mercilessly and killingly as did I and Nochéztli. We four struck at the soldiers' throats and faces, the only vulnerable places between their steel helmets and steel breastplates, and so did our Aztéca warriors wielding obsidian maquáhuime.
The Yaki warriors, however, did not have to be so precise in their aim. In these close quarters, they had dropped their unwieldy long spears and were almost indiscriminately swinging their ironwood war clubs. A blow to an opponent's head would dent his helmet deeply enough that his skull would cave in beneath it. A blow to an opponent's body would so dent his breastplate that he would either die of crushed bones and organs or—more agonizingly—suffocate, his chest unable to expand to breathe.
During all that turmoil, other people were dodging among us or scampering around us, in a panic to get out of the contested area, and many others could be seen, farther off, likewise fleeing from the town into the open country. None wore armor or uniform, and most were barely dressed, having leapt straight from their night's pallets. They were the slave inhabitants of this quarter where we had chosen to strike—or most of them were. The tumult had of course wakened all of Tonalá, so more than a few Spanish men, women and children, equally ill-clothed, were among the fugitives, obviously and unashamedly hoping to be mistaken for slaves themselves, and let to go free. But not many of those got away. We marauders allowed the passage of everyone of our own color, or darker, but every white-skinned person of whatever sex or age who came within our reach we instantly skewered or hacked or clubbed to death. To my regret, two of the Spaniards' horses also got killed, inadvertently, and four or five others wandered skittishly about, riderless, wild-eyed, wide-nostriled, trying to snort away the smells of blood and pólvora smoke.
When every last Spanish officer and soldier and pretended slave lay dead or dying, my three mounted comrades rode off into the streets of the town, the Aztéca warriors hooting and howling behind them. I stayed at the scene of this first combat for a brief while, partly to count our own fallen people. They were very few, compared to the Spanish losses. And the male slaves of our company who had been detailed as Swaddlers and Swallowers would shortly be arriving, either to bind up the wounds of any warriors who might be revived or to slip an easeful blade into those who were beyond the help of any tíciltin.
But what mainly detained me at the scene was the fact that all the Yaki also were staying, every man of them vigorously sawing at the head of a Spanish corpse, usually using the belt knife that the soldier had worn when he was alive. After a warrior had cut a circle in the skin around the head, from nape of neck, above the ears and eyebrows, back to the nape, he had only to give a sudden, forceful tug, and the hair and scalp and forehead skin came ripping away, leaving the cadaver crowned with only a pulp of raw flesh that oozed blood. Then the Yaki would dash away to another and do the same. However, some of the fallen Spaniards were not yet quite corpses. Those could and did shriek or moan or convulse when the tug was given, and their heads' exposed pulp bled profusely.
Cursing vehemently, I edged my horse here and there among that carnage, swatting at the Yaki warriors with the flat of my sword and pointing townward with it, shouting orders. They flinched and grumbled in their unlovely language—I gathered that they were accustomed to collect enemy scalps while they were fresh and easy to cut loose. But I did my best to convey, with gestures, that there would be many more scalps, far more than enough to adorn every Yaki's skirt, and I cursed some more, and urgently waved them onward. They went, still grumbling, and only slowly at first, but then running, as if it had suddenly occurred to them that others of our army might already be harvesting the finest-quality scalps of the townsfolk.
It was not difficult for me to follow my men who had preceded me, for they seemed to have gone spreading havoc everywhere. Whatever street I took, whatever cross street I turned into, there lay corpses everywhere—half-clad, bloody, pierced or slashed or thoroughly mangled—sprawled on the street cobblestones or across their own homes' thresholds. From some houses, the residents had not had time to flee, but I could tell that there were bodies inside, for much blood had flowed out the open doors. Only once in those ravaged streets did I come upon a living white person. A man wearing nothing but his underclothes, bleeding from a gash in his neck that had failed to kill him, came running up to me, ranting insanely. In his hands he held, by their hair, three severed heads: one a woman's, the other two smaller. He could not have expected me to understand his Spanish, but what he shouted—over and over—was: