War God: Nights of the Witch Read online

Moctezuma trembled. Exactly as he had feared, these were not men Hummingbird was describing but an army of tueles – of gods. The fabled Xiuhcoatl, the Fire Serpent, was the magical weapon of the gods, able to strike men dead and dismember their bodies at a distance. Likewise who but gods could enchant wild beasts and turn them to their purpose?

  ‘It is my desire and my responsibility, lord, to know all you have to teach about these enemies. Are they the companions of Quetzalcoatl, come to overthrow my rule? Tell me, I beseech you, what can I do to satisfy you?’ Moctezuma bent to his victim again. He’d ripped her chest wide open with the first incision but she was still alive, eyes fluttering in pain and terror. Oblivious to her pleas he extracted her heart, placed it sizzling on the brazier, and turned to the next woman. The process had become automatic and he was able to carry out his duties while keeping his attention focussed almost exclusively on Hummingbird, whose body had somehow vanished but whose face had grown to enormous size.

  ‘It’s very simple,’ the god said, ‘a straightforward transaction. Raid the Tlascalans, for their young girls, raid the Huejotzingos, raid the Otomis, bring me virgins, and I’ll give you the help you seek …’

  Moctezuma feared to repeat himself but it seemed there was no choice. ‘It will take time, lord,’ he said, ‘My army is already in the field harvesting more victims, but I cannot give you a large basket of virgins tonight … Even so, I beg you to help me now on this matter of the strangers.’

  Hummingbird seemed to think about it. ‘I help you now,’ he said, as though clarifying some point of argument, ‘and you give me virgins later? That’s the proposition?’

  ‘Yes, lord, that is what I ask.’

  There was a long silence before the god said finally: ‘I believe that’s acceptable.’ He paused again as though for thought. ‘But I’ll need a down-payment …’

  ‘Anything within my power …’

  ‘The women’s fattening pen isn’t empty yet …’

  ‘You are right, lord.’

  ‘So empty it. Empty it tonight! Before I help you I want all those women’s hearts. Every one of them.’

  The visionary realm and the here and now were both equally present to Moctezuma and, in some strange juncture between the two, Hummingbird’s immense face began to fade and melt downward, seeming gradually to dissolve into the mass of flickering orange lanterns that filled the great plaza below. The lanterns were in motion, dancing, swirling, coalescing into clumps and blots of light, spiralling apart again, leaving ghostly trails to mark their paths. The face of the god continued slowly to fade until soon there was nothing left of him but his two gigantic eyes, the whites stark as bone, the obsidian irises black as night – and they called Moctezuma down into their depths with a terrible seductive power. He felt a compulsion to jump from the top of the pyramid, dive into those cool, black pools in the midst of that glimmering orange sea and merge himself forever with Hummingbird, but then a hand took his elbow and his whole body jerked like a man wakened suddenly from sleep.

  ‘Are you all right, sire,’ asked a familiar voice. He looked round to see that it was his own good and virtuous brother Cuitláhuac who had taken his arm. Glancing down, Moctezuma discovered, to his horror, that he had walked away from the sacrificial stone and now stood tottering right on the edge of the precipitous northern stairway. The twenty victims he had yet to process from this afternoon’s sacrifices were lined up on the steps below, staring at him with … what?

  Horror?

  Hope?

  Because for a moment there, Moctezuma realised, he must have come very close to leaping to his death.

  ‘Thank you, Cuitláhuac,’ he said, allowing the other man to draw him back to safety. ‘I grow weary.’

  ‘You must rest, brother. Let me or Ahuizotl take over from you here. Only a few victims remain.’

  ‘No. I cannot rest. None of us can rest. I have been in the presence of the god!’

  Cuitláhuac gasped, suitably impressed.

  ‘I have been in the presence of the god,’ Moctezuma repeated, ‘and he has ordered more sacrifices tonight.’

  Ahuizotl had been skulking in the background – he would have been pleased to see me fall, thought Moctezuma – but now came scuttling forward. ‘More sacrifices tonight?’ the high priest yelped. ‘Surely we must rest, lord? All the teams are tired. Tomorrow we can begin again …’

  ‘We will not rest!’ roared Moctezuma. ‘The sacrifices must continue through the night! The god himself has ordered this.’ He lowered his voice: ‘Do not thwart me, Ahuizotl,’ he hissed, ‘or you will be the first to die.’

  The high priest gulped, nodded his understanding.

  ‘Take two hundred of my palace guard,’ said Moctezuma, ‘and round up all the women still in the fattening pen. None must remain. You’re to bring them all to the pyramid.’

  Ahuizotl blinked. ‘All, Your Majesty?’

  ‘Yes. All.’

  ‘Do you realise their numbers, Majesty?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘After this afternoon’s sacrifices, themselves not even complete’ – Ahuizotl glared at the line of terrified victims still waiting on the steps – ‘more than one thousand seven hundred women remain in the pen. Many are disorderly and belligerent – I myself was attacked this afternoon – and we faced severe problems martialling even five hundred and twenty of them. At least give me until tomorrow if I must bring seventeen hundred to the knife. I don’t have sufficient enforcers to do this in a single night.’

  ‘You will do this, Ahuizotl, and you will do it tonight.’

  The high priest subsided into a glowering silence.

  ‘You have two hundred of my palace guard to help you marshal troublesome prisoners,’ Moctezuma reminded him. He lowered his voice again. In his opinion it was this troublesome priest who needed to be marshalled. ‘Give me one more excuse,’ he said, ‘and I’ll have you flayed alive.’

  Ahuizotl stiffened. ‘Please accept my abject apologies, lord. I will go immediately to the pen. I will bring all the women …’

  ‘Of course you will,’ said Moctezuma. He turned his back and looked at the patterns of orange lights swirling down below in the great plaza. He couldn’t see Hummingbird’s whirlpool eyes any more, not even a hint of them, but then right in his ear he heard the god whisper. ‘Eat more teonanácatl and I will come to you again in the night.’

  ‘Oh Ahuizotl,’ Moctezuma called after the high priest who was lifting the hem of his robes and about to attempt a descent of the slippery northern stair, ‘those teonanácatl you sent me earlier …’

  ‘Yes, Majesty …’

  ‘I require more. I have great work ahead of me.’

  ‘My servant will bring you the mushrooms, lord.’

  ‘Good,’ said Moctezuma. ‘Very good.’ He remembered he still held the obsidian knife. Dismissing Ahuizotl from his mind, he looked to the sacrificial stone where the next victim lay splayed, awaiting his attention.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Tenochtitlan, Thursday 18 February 1519

  Tozi sat with her face pressed against the bars of the fattening pen, looking out into the great plaza. Priests had lit hundreds of flickering orange lanterns and were carrying them through the steps of a complicated, flowing dance, long lines and interwoven processions coming together and pulling apart, fantastic shapes and patterns briefly forming and dissolving.

  At the centre of this swirling, undulating sea of light, sending up a cacophony of drumbeats and conch blasts, squatting in a dark, malignant mass like some monstrous suppurating tumour, reared the great pyramid.

  From her vantage point Tozi could see the summit and both the north and west faces clearly, and what was striking was how all these areas were not just blood-smeared as usual when sacrifices were underway, but seemed to be thickly covered everywhere with a wet, oozing crust of blood.

  It was as though the pyramid itself were bleeding.

  And down at its base, amongst the spiralling la
nterns, swept by attendants into great heaps to either side of the stairways, were huge numbers of butchered torsos.

  Tozi’s head reeled.

  Armies of shadows and darkness were on the march, encroaching everywhere, light fast leaching from the heavens, true night beginning to fall, but it was easy enough to count the twenty bedraggled women lined up on the north stairway waiting to climb the last few steps to their deaths. A similar number were in sight on the west stairway. Tozi couldn’t see the east and south stairways, but she was sure they too were in use in the vast engine of human sacrifice that had been set in motion today. Out of the hundreds of victims seized this afternoon, only around eighty – twenty on each of the four stairways – remained alive.

  The moon was already in the sky, but the last rays of the setting sun still lingered on the summit platform of the pyramid, illuminating a tall, naked man, covered from head to toe in blood, who balanced unsteadily at the top of the northern stairway, brandishing an obsidian knife.

  He’d looked different this morning in his robes, but there was no doubt in Tozi’s mind who this was. She nudged Malinal. ‘That’s Moctezuma,’ she whispered, pointing at the naked figure, ‘the Great Speaker himself.’

  Malinal and Coyotl sat on either side of her, no more able than she was to tear their eyes away from the nightmarish spectacle of the great pyramid. Attracted by a growing commotion from the plaza, they’d left their place near the back of the prison and walked past Black Teeth and her group. They’d not been molested but were acutely conscious of the hateful stares of the two troublemakers from Xoco’s gang as they made their way here to join other morbid spectators already gathered by the bars to watch the sacrifices.

  Coyotl’s usually happy features were set in a deep frown. ‘If the Great Speaker is not careful,’ he said, ‘he will fall down the stairs.’

  ‘Then let us hope,’ said Malinal, ‘that for once in his evil, useless life he’s not careful.’

  A woman sitting nearby, who seemed unaware that accusations of witchcraft had been made against Tozi, giggled raucously: ‘Let’s hope!’ she agreed. ‘Maybe if we all hope together we can make it happen?’

  Maybe we can, Tozi thought. The idea seemed perfectly reasonable to her – worth trying, anyway – and as though on cue two more women joined in, then a third, chanting low and urgent: ‘Fall! Fall! Fall! Fall!’ Others round about began to take up the chorus, but were quickly silenced when the imposing figure of Cuitláhuac, younger brother of the Great Speaker, thrust himself forward beside Moctezuma, took his arm and guided him away from the top of the stairs.

  The two men paused and spoke animatedly. They were still in sight on the summit platform, close to the sacrificial stone where the next victim lay spreadeagled, arms and legs braced by the assistant priests, waiting for death. Then a third figure came into view beside them, and Tozi’s heart lurched. ‘There’s Ahuizotl,’ she told Malinal. ‘The high priest.’

  ‘I know who he is,’ said Malinal. An uncomfortable silence followed while she seemed to think things over. ‘In fact, I know him personally.’ Her eyes were downcast. ‘There’s stuff I have to tell you about myself.’

  Tozi shrugged. She had seen the look of recognition Ahuizotl had fixed on her friend, but she’d not yet attempted to read Malinal’s mind and she felt no desire to pry. ‘I know you’re a good person. I know you’re brave. I know you’ve stuck by me and Coyotl. Nothing else matters …’

  ‘But …’

  ‘Save it for when we get out of here.’

  ‘I might be putting you in danger—’

  ‘Save it! It’s not going to change anything. We’re friends now. We stick together. That’s what friends do, isn’t it, Coyotl?’

  ‘We stick together,’ confirmed the little boy, ‘and we help each other.’

  ‘Good,’ said Tozi. ‘I’m glad we’re all agreed.’ She felt a fresh trickle of blood dripping over her upper lip, raised her cupped hand, blew her nose loudly into it and threw the blood and snot to the ground.

  ‘Better not to blow,’ Malinal suggested. ‘Just makes nosebleeds worse.’ She leaned forward, holding out her thumb and forefinger. ‘May I?’ she asked.

  Tozi nodded and tilted back her head. A lot more blood was running from her nose, and now it started to pour down the back of her throat as well.

  ‘No,’ said Malinal. ‘Don’t lean back, lean forward.’ She reached out and gripped Tozi’s nostrils, pinching them closed with a firm, gentle pressure. ‘Breathe through your mouth,’ she said.

  Tozi breathed, Malinal held her nose and, over Malinal’s fingers, Tozi saw Coyotl’s big bright eyes looking up at her, filled with concern.

  My friends, she thought.

  It was the best feeling she could remember having for a very long time.

  When Tozi’s nosebleed stopped, full night had fallen, but outside in the plaza hundreds of black-robed priests continued their slow processional dance of lights. Swinging loosely from their hands, their orange lanterns sent an unearthly glow flickering up the sides of the pyramid, and this seemed to be collected and reflected back by the lurid flames of the sacrificial braziers on the summit platform and the rows of guttering torches set up in front of the temple of Hummingbird. The great snakeskin drum, which had fallen silent, was beating again – a mournful, hollow, gut-wrenching sound. A conch blew, somewhere a flute trilled, and Tozi saw Moctezuma back at work at the sacrificial stone, wielding the knife, cutting out hearts. Lined up on the stair beneath him fewer than ten victims remained, and amongst them was one – she seemed no more than a child – who was screaming in terror again and again the words: ‘Mama, Mama, Mama …’

  ‘Poor kid,’ whispered Malinal. ‘All afternoon being beaten and shoved by Mexica guards, climbing the pyramid, seeing all that blood, hearing all those cries, guessing what’s coming to her in the end …’

  ‘That’s how they want us,’ said Tozi. ‘They want us mad with fear when they feed us to their gods. They think we taste better that way.’

  Coyotl had been very quiet but now he began sobbing and sniffling. ‘I don’t want to be fed to their gods,’ he said.

  Tozi wrapped her arms round him, held him tight, told him, ‘You will not be. No matter what happens, I’ll protect you. I’ll never let them hurt you.’

  ‘Besides,’ said Malinal – she pointed to the priests with their lanterns, to the pyramid, to the few remaining victims – ‘surely it’s over for tonight?’

  Sometimes, even when she didn’t want to, Tozi couldn’t help seeing inside other people’s minds. That was how it was now when the sight came on her unbidden, and in an instant she knew things about Malinal. Knew that she had been a slave but prized for her beauty, highly trained in the arts of love and privileged despite her captivity. Knew that noble and powerful men had paid her owner fortunes to enjoy her. As though she were viewing swimmers at the bottom of a murky pool, Tozi saw that many of the leaders of Tenochtitlan had crossed Malinal’s path – here was Itzcoatl, here was Coaxoch, here Zolton, here Cuitláhuac, here Maxtla. And here? Whose was this mean face, this mottled face hidden in the deeps of the seeing-pool, if not Ahuizotl himself, high priest of the Mexica, a man sworn on pain of death to lifelong celibacy?

  That was when the seeing ended with a flicker, as abruptly as it had begun, and Tozi found Malinal shaking her by the shoulders, peering into her eyes, saying: ‘Are you all right?’

  Ahuizotl! Tozi thought. So that’s what you were trying to tell me. But instead she said: ‘I’ve survived in here for seven months and I’ve not been through a day like this before. I’ve seen them sacrifice thirty, fifty, sometimes even a hundred often enough. But never so many victims as went under the knife today, and the Great Speaker leading the killing from morning to night? There has to be a special reason for that.’

  Malinal’s beautiful face had become sombre and thoughtful. ‘There is a reason,’ she said.

  Tozi gave her a long, level look. ‘And you know it?’

&
nbsp; ‘Something happened late last year. Something that’s never happened before. I think it’s made Moctezuma crazy …’

  From the top of the pyramid they could both hear the screams of a woman in terrible fear, abruptly silenced by the thud of the obsidian knife.

  ‘Four months ago,’ said Malinal, ‘strangers appeared in the Yucatán, in the lands of the Chontal Maya. They were bearded and white-skinned, they came from across the eastern sea in boats as big as mountains and they made their way to the town of Potonchan near the mouth of the Tabasco river. They had great powers, these strangers. They were few in number – about a hundred – but they possessed fearsome weapons and they defeated an army of ten thousand before they returned to the sea. Some thought they were human beings, some thought they were gods, maybe even the retinue of the god Quetzalcoatl himself, come to herald his return – it’s still not settled.’ She lowered her eyes. ‘I am of the Chontal Maya,’ she confided, and I was born in Potonchan. My people fear Moctezuma. They’re not his vassals, they don’t pay him tribute, but they like to please him. They sent word to him, paintings on bark, and an eyewitness to describe the strangers with a full account of the battle … That’s how I came to know about this …’

  ‘From the witness?’

  ‘He spoke only Maya, and when the Great Speaker wanted to question him I was summoned to interpret. I’ve been a slave in Tenochtitlan for five years but I have a gift for languages and I’ve learnt fluent Nahuatl.’ Malinal paused, looked at Tozi, then at Coyotl: ‘Does it seem odd to you that a slave such as I was chosen for so important a task rather than some diplomat?’

  Coyotl was indignant. ‘No! You were chosen because you’re beautiful … I bet the diplomats are all ugly!’

  Malinal tousled his hair. ‘Thank you!’ she said. ‘That’s very sweet!’ Her manner changed. ‘But I think the real reason I was chosen was because I was expendable. Anyway, this is what happened. The witness and I were bound hand and foot and forced to kneel in the audience chamber of the palace, in front of an empty throne, until Moctezuma came in and was seated. We saw just his feet, his clean brown feet in gold sandals, and the hem of his robe. We were told we must not look at his face, must keep our eyes downcast at all times, or we would die. Then the guards left the room. The voice of the Great Speaker is soft but very cold. He told me that the witness should describe the strangers – their appearance, their manner of speech, their manner of dress and their weapons. The witness gave his report, described their beards and their white skins and the deadly weapons they used. I interpreted and all the time I felt the atmosphere changing, becoming very dark, very heavy, like a funeral. Twice, just for a heartbeat, I risked a glance and I saw that fear had come upon the Great Speaker as he received the news. Believe me! I saw it! His jaw hanging loose! His hands shaking! His eyes sliding from side to side. You don’t expect the Speaker of the Mexica to be a coward, Tozi, but that’s what Moctezuma is, a coward – even though the witness did tell a terrifying story! I put it faithfully into Nahuatl and when I’d given it all, Moctezuma groaned. He clutched his belly! His bowels turned to water!’ She let go a peal of laughter: ‘He just shat right there, Tozi, in front of us! There were terrible farts and … you know … other sounds. The most awful smell …’