"I can see that," I said, trying not to sound pleased, though nothing could have pleased me more to hear. "But the viceroy in the City of Mexíco—that Señor Mendoza—does he also regard Coronado's project as folly?"
The bishop looked troubled. "As I said, I am not a pragmatic man. But I can recognize expediency when I see it. Coronado and Don Antonio de Mendoza are old friends. Coronado is married to a cousin of King Carlos. Mendoza is also a friend of Bishop Zumárraga, and he, I fear, is ever too ready to endorse any venture calculated to please and enrich King Carlos—and endear himself to the king and the pope, may God forgive me for saying so. Marshal all those facts, Juan Británico. Is it likely that anyone, high or low, will speak to Coronado a discouraging word?"
"Certainly not I," I said lightly, "and I am lowest of the low." The worm in the coyacapúli fruit, I thought, long having eaten from within, now about to hurst the fruit asunder. "I thank you for your graciousness in receiving me, Your Excellency, and for the refreshing cakes and wine, and I ask your leave to be on my way."
Still being more decent to a lowly indio than any other white man I ever met, Padre Vasco cordially urged me to remain awhile—to reside under his roof, to attend services, to make confession, to take communion, to converse at greater length—but I lied some more, telling him that I had instructions to hurry and "bear the message" to a still unregenerate pagan tribe some distance away.
Well, it was not entirely a lie. I did have a message to deliver, and at a considerable distance. I left Compostela, not having to sneak this time, no one paying any attention to me at all, and went briskly toward Chicomóztotl.
"Thanks be to Huitzilopóchtli and every other god!" exclaimed Nochéztli. "You have come at last, Tenamáxtzin, not a moment too soon. I have here the most numerous army ever assembled in The One World, every man of it impatiently stamping his feet to be on the march, and I have been barely able to hold them in check, awaiting your orders."
"You have done well, faithful knight. I have just come through the Spanish lands, and clearly no one there has any inkling of this gathering storm."
"That is good. But, among our own people, the word must have been passed from mouth to ear to mouth. We have acquired far more recruits than the many we enlisted from the lands hereabout, and the very many who came from the north, wave after wave of them, saying you had sent them. For example, all those women warriors from Michihuácan have made their way hither. They say they are tired of inflicting merely skirmish attacks on Spanish properties; they want to be with us when we march in force. Also there are countless runaway slaves—indios and Moros and mixtures of breeds—escaped from mines and plantations and obrajes, who have managed to find this place. They are even more avid than the rest of us to wreak havoc on their masters, but I have had to put them to special training, because few have ever even held a weapon before."
"Every man counts," I said, "and every woman. Can you tell me how many we have, in total?"
"As best I can estimate, a hundred of hundreds. A formidable host, in truth. They long ago overflowed the seven caverns here and are camped all over these mountains. Since they hail from so many different nations and perhaps a hundred different tribes within those nations, I thought it best to assign and segregate their camping places according to their origins. Many of them, as you doubtless know, have been for ages inimical to one another—or to every other. I did not want an intestine war erupting here."
"Very astute management, Knight Nochéztli."
"However, the very variety of our forces makes the management of them most complicated. I have delegated my best fellow knights and under-officers, each to be responsible for one or another mass of warriors. But their orders, instructions, reprimands, whatever, given in the Náhuatl tongue, can be given only to those tribal chief warriors who can understand Náhuatl. Those, in turn, must relay the words to their men in their language. And then the words must be passed along to the next tribe, who may speak a different dialect of the same language, but can at least be made to understand. And then they somehow transmit the words to yet another tribe. Probably one man in every hundred of all these hundreds spends a good part of his time acting as interpreter. And of course the commands frequently get contorted down the course of that long process, which has made for some marvelous misunderstandings. It has not quite happened yet, but one of these days, when I form a contingent of our men into ranks and give the command to the first rank, 'Stand to arms!' and the command is passed along, the men in the last rank are going to hear it as 'Lie down and go to sleep!' As for those Yaki you sent, none of us can communicate with them. They would not understand if I did order them to go to sleep."
I had to stifle a smile at Nochéztli's overflow of exasperation. But I was proud and admiring of the way he had handled the vast army under those difficult conditions, and told him so.
"Well, so far," he said, "I have been able to keep all the men from getting too restive, and from quarreling among themselves, by giving them orders that can be conveyed—even to the Yaki—with gestures and demonstrations instead of words, and thus keeping them all occupied with various labors. Appointing certain groups to do the hunting and fishing and gathering of food, for instance, others to do the burning of charcoal, the mixing of pólvora, the casting of lead balls and so on. Those couriers you sent to Tzebóruko and to Aztlan did return with ample supplies of the yellow azufre and the bitter salitre. So we now have as much powder and as many balls as we can carry when we leave here. I am pleased to report, too, that we have many more of the thunder-sticks than before. The Purémpe women brought many that they captured from the Spaniards in New Galicia, and so did numerous warriors of the northern tribes who stole them from Spanish army outposts as they came hither through the Disputed Lands. We now have nearly a hundred of those weapons, and about twice that many men who have become expert at using them. We have also acquired a goodly armory of steel knives and swords."
"This is all most gratifying to hear," I said. "Have you anything not so gratifying to report?"
"Only that we are better supplied with armament than with food. Given a hundred of hundreds of mouths to be fed, well, you can imagine. Our hunters and foragers have by now killed every last animal and bird and plucked every fruit, nut and edible green from all these mountains, and emptied the waters of every last fish. I had to set a limit to their foraging, you see, not let them go too far abroad, lest word of their activity reach the wrong ears. But you may wish to countermand that order, Tenamáxtzin, for we are now reduced to scant rations indeed—roots and tubers and frogs and insects. Such deprivation is of course beneficial for warriors. It makes them lean and hard and eager to reap from the fat lands we will be invading. However, besides the Purémpe women now among us, a good number of those runaway slaves who fled here are women and children. I hate to sound like a woman myself, but I do feel sorry for those weaker ones who came trusting that we would care for them. I hope, my lord, that you will give instant order for us all to march from here into more bounteous lands."