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 persuadedthe 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 openmy 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 thinkyou’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 marketplacewho 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.