War God: Nights of the Witch Read online

  In this way Cortés was finally left alone with the thin, weather-beaten man, who at once told him that to sail this night, in this weather, would be suicide – advice the caudillo clearly did not want to hear.

  ‘Come come, Alaminos,’ he said. ‘Has easy living stolen your courage? You’ve sailed in worse gales than this!’

  ‘I have,’ the man called Alaminos admitted. He looked to the troubled sky now overcast from horizon to horizon, the light of the moon entirely swallowed. ‘But we’re only at the birth of the storm. It’s going to get worse. Much worse.’

  ‘If the month were August or September I’d agree with you,’ Cortés said cheerfully. ‘But this is February, man. February! Think about it. Since you sailed with Columbus, how many great storms have you witnessed in these waters in February?’

  ‘None,’ Alaminos admitted.

  ‘March then, or April? Even May? Come now, be honest. Have you ever seen a real storm hit Cuba or any of the islands before the month of June?’

  Again Alaminos was forced to admit he had not. ‘But there’s always a first time,’ he said, ‘and I have a bad feeling about this storm, Don Hernán. A very bad feeling. I’m a pilot, and a good one—’

  ‘A great one!’ Cortés interrupted.

  Alaminos ignored the compliment and pressed on: ‘… because I trust my feelings. That’s why I’ve never lost a ship. If you insist on sailing this night then I give you fair warning – you will sink your entire fleet and drown every one of us with it.’

  ‘Fie, man! Don’t say such things!’

  ‘It’s not the saying that matters, but the hearing, Don Hernán. Hear me well, I beg you! Delay our departure until the storm clears.’

  Cortés walked to the rail of the navigation deck and stared out over the darkened harbour, across the agitated waters, into the teeth of the wind. He stood silent, his head held high, like a hero of old, like a Caesar or an Alexander. Seeing him like that, indomitable, fearless and strong, Pepillo believed in his heart what Alaminos doubted – that this great caudillo would vanquish the storm in the same confident way he had vanquished Muñoz.

  ‘I’m grateful for your advice,’ Cortés now said, still gazing into the night. ‘It is good advice and well meant, but mine is the burden of command and there are other matters you know nothing of that I must consider.’ He turned and walked back to join Alaminos, who was standing by the whipstaff that steered the great ship; he clapped him heartily on the shoulders. ‘Besides,’ he said, holding up a finger to the gale, ‘this is a strong wind, but a fair one in my judgement – it’s blowing our way. Once we’re free of the harbour and out on the open sea, it’s going to take us straight to the New Lands.’

  ‘So we sail then?’

  ‘Posthaste, Alaminos. The ebb tide will speed our departure. Don’t you see how everything is going our way?’

  Alaminos still looked gloomy.

  ‘Well?’ said Cortés. ‘What is it, man? Speak your mind.’

  ‘Even if we’re not sunk,’ said the pilot, ‘you can be sure the fleet will be scattered. I have to plot a course to a rendezvous point and the course must be shared with all the captains before we sail or we’ll never find each other again.’

  ‘I’ve been giving thought to that. There was an island you visited with Córdoba in sight of the coast of the New Lands. Friendly natives, you said. Plentiful game. Sweet water. Sounds like just the spot for us.’

  ‘The natives call it Cozumel,’ Alaminos answered immediately. ‘The island of swallows, or some such meaning, as best we could understand it through signs and pointing. It’s a good place.’

  ‘Quick about it then! Plot a course for Cozumel. Make copies for each of the captains. I’ll have a rider standing by to distribute them across the fleet and then we sail.’

  The ship had become a hubbub of rapidly increasing noise and activity, with sailors swarming in the rigging and working together on ropes to complete a hundred different bewildering tasks that Pepillo couldn’t understand. So far, however, the aftcastle wasn’t the focus of any of this, so he crawled back to his hiding place and tried to make a plan.

  One thing was sure – Muñoz was no longer on board the Santa María and therefore posed no immediate threat to him. Pepillo realised he could now walk about freely, if he wished, without risking another beating. But if he did that, then might not he too be thrown off the ship? After all, what use was a page without a master?

  He heard Cortés’s voice again, now on the main deck, shouting for a despatch rider. A little later a horse galloped off and all the time the frenetic pace of preparations continued. Pepillo knew no way to make himself useful in any of this, even if he weren’t a mass of bruises and pain, so all in all, he decided, the best thing he could do was stay exactly where he was, stowed away behind the coiled ropes.

  Once out at sea he couldn’t be sent back.

  He was beginning to think he might actually get away with it, when he heard men climbing from the main deck to the navigation deck, heavy footsteps and a stream of foul oaths.

  ‘Where’s those bloody ropes?’ someone said.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Tlascala, small hours of Friday 19 February 1519

  Acolmiztli and Tree sprinted downslope to the unguarded thorn barrier and tore it apart, opening the way for the rest of the squad to stream through in a compact mass.

  No turning back now, Shikotenka thought. He stretched out his legs and took the lead, flashing past neat ranks of tents and bivouacs ranged east and west of the wide central avenue. Glancing at young Tochtli running proudly beside him, he felt for the first time the full weight of the danger he’d asked his men to face and the threat of imminent failure. Tlascalans were the greatest runners in the world, and these were the best of the best, but even they would need three minutes or more to cover the two thousand paces to Coaxoch’s pavilion.

  All round them harsh shouts and cries of alarm filled the air and torches flared and guttered in the rising wind. The moon, troubled by clouds, still shed enough light to show hosts of warriors, intermingled with a rabble of camp followers, merchants and pleasure girls, crowding through the tented alleys towards the edge of the southeastern sector where Guatemoc lay. Drawn by the commotion, many more were surging across the avenue from the southwestern sector, but none seemed to suspect the rapidly advancing Tlascalans in their guise as jaguar and eagle knights, simply making way for them as they pounded past.

  It was an astonishing dereliction of duty, yet another sign that the Mexica were falling short of the legendary discipline Shikotenka so much admired – almost all the sentries along the avenue had left their posts to join in the general melee. Here and there, a few were still in place, novices conspicuous in their white cotton armour, who stood around awkwardly clutching their spears and casting anxious glances towards the southeast. Several actually saluted the Tlascalans and Shikotenka heard Chipahua snigger, ‘Mexica arseholes!’

  Five hundred paces out from the pavilion, a heavy burst of rain spattered down like an avalanche of small stones, soon settling into a drenching, insistent downpour, and in the same instant the last gap in the clouds closed, completely obscuring the moon and plunging the camp into darkness. Perfect, thought Shikotenka. Further evidence that the gods indeed blessed his plan. Campfires and torches were quickly doused to dull red points by the squall, but the great pavilion towered directly ahead, bright as a beacon, its walls of thick maguey-fibre sheeting, and its soaring conical roof stretched over a frame of poles lit up brilliantly from within by a multitude of lanterns.

  There was a sudden shouted challenge and a troop of Mexica spearmen, silhouetted against the pavilion’s glow, loomed out of the dark. There were no more than twenty of them, perhaps thirty, all novices judging from their uniforms, but still enough to put up a fight and hinder the attack. ‘Step aside, fools!’ yelled Shikotenka at the top of his voice. He disguised his Tlascalan accent and summoned his most regal tones. ‘We’re here to protect the Snake
Woman.’

  ‘Let’s just kill them,’ hissed Tree.

  ‘Maybe we won’t have to,’ said Shikotenka, his mind working furiously, and as they closed with the other group he brandished Guatemoc’s macuahuitl and yelled again: ‘Step aside! Tlascalan attack in the southeast quadrant. We’re here to protect the Snake Woman!’

  He wasn’t even surprised when the ruse worked. In this army of novices, the uniforms of jaguar and eagle knights commanded immense respect, and with hair and faces hidden by their distinctive wooden helmets, there was nothing to identify his squad as the enemy. After only the slightest hesitation, the block of spearmen divided before them, some of them raising their right arms in hasty salutes as the Tlascalans shot through the gap. ‘Reinforce the southeast quadrant at the double,’ Shikotenka yelled back through the rain. ‘Heavy fighting there. Prince Guatemoc’s been killed!’

  Chipahua gave another snigger. ‘Arseholes,’ he said again. The word boomed emphatically inside his eagle-beaked helmet.

  Yes, thought Shikotenka. Arseholes. A whole host of arseholes. Come rain or shine there should be hundreds of sentries around the Snake Woman’s pavilion, blocking every road. Instead it seemed that Coaxoch was so confident of his power, so secure in the midst of this huge army, that he’d not thought to take additional precautions.

  The pavilion’s entrance was a great square, twice the height of a man, veiled with gaudy curtains and approached under an immense awning borne up on rows of gilded wooden pillars, thick as tree trunks. Protected from the rain by the awning, each pillar supported a guttering lantern; by the light of these, Shikotenka saw that a dozen men had taken shelter here. They wore the distinctive yellow and black livery of the Snake Woman’s personal guards and were peering out into the storm, plainly disturbed by the general commotion in the camp, but apparently not yet aware of what had happened because their spears were held at rest and their macuahuitls still sheathed. Better still, Shikotenka realised, the lanterns that made the guards so visible to him must make him and his squad invisible to them.

  He didn’t need to give orders. His Tlascalans all knew instinctively what to do and bore down on the pavilion at a dead run, the sound of their footfalls muffled by the driving rain. They were less than twenty paces out when they were spotted, so close the guards had no time to deploy their weapons.

  The slaughter began.

  A big Mexica charged with clawed hands, yelling defiance, his teeth bared, but Shikotenka brought his macuahuitl crashing down on the man’s head, spilling his brains. Tugging the weapon free he glimpsed Tree flailing about mightily to left and right with his huge war club, and Acolmiztli jerking his knife out of a guard’s stomach followed by a coil of guts. Tochtli whirled his macuahuitl in a classic training-ground manoeuvre; he struck off another guard’s leg above the knee and half severed his neck as he fell, abruptly silencing his screams. With fifty against twelve the fight was over in seconds. Shikotenka saw Etzli slip in a pool of blood and the last Mexica still standing thrust a spear down at him as he hit the ground. The Tlascalan rolled to avoid the blow and, as the guard thrust again, Tochtli sprang into his path, deflected the spear with his macuahuitl, drew his dagger left-handed and stabbed the man repeatedly through the chest.

  Etzli picked himself up and clapped Tochtli on the shoulder. ‘Good work, little Rabbit,’ he said. ‘You’ll make a warrior yet.’

  Nicely done, cousin, Shikotenka thought. To win a compliment from Etzli was no easy task and brought Tochtli one step closer to the recognition and acceptance he craved.

  Chipahua and Ilhuicamina were checking the bodies of the foe. They found three who were injured but not dead and swiftly slit their throats.

  The rain still poured down, a torrential, rumbling flood beating on the sagging awning overhead and on the glowing lantern-lit walls of the great pavilion, alive with silhouettes. From within came the sounds of wild music and laughter, and quite clearly and unmistakably Shikotenka heard the high-pitched groans and gasps of a woman approaching orgasm.

  ‘Bet she’s faking it,’ commented Chipahua sourly.

  ‘You’re just jealous,’ growled Ilhuicamina.

  Amazingly no one inside the pavilion seemed to have heard the sounds of struggle at the entrance. No alarm had yet been raised. What sounded like a party in full swing, even an orgy, simply continued unchecked.

  Shikotenka signalled his platoon commanders to gather round. ‘Tree, Acolmiztli, you and your men are with me. We go straight in through the front entrance and remember – we’re here only for Coaxoch and his sons and we can’t risk more than a two-hundred count to get the job done. Kill everyone who gets in our way but don’t waste time on anyone else. Same goes for you, Chipahua – take your ten round the west side of this monstrous tent and cut your way in. Ilhuicamina – you get the east side. Etzli – you get the north. We meet in the middle – that’s where Coaxoch will be.’

  ‘What if he isn’t?’ said Etzli.

  ‘He’ll be there – surrounded by sycophants and arse-lickers. He’s too fat to miss.’

  Shikotenka was less sure of this than he pretended to be. The pavilion was massive – there could be dozens of inner rooms and it wasn’t inevitable that Coaxoch would be holding court. He might be sleeping. He might be fornicating. He might be taking a bath.

  But it was too late now – much too late! – for any such concerns.

  With slow, deliberate movements Shikotenka removed his helmet, shrugged loose his long Tlascalan locks and stripped off his jaguar knight uniform until he wore only a loincloth, weapons, waterskin and sandals. He signalled everyone else to do the same. ‘No more disguises,’ he said. ‘They have to know who we are.’

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Tenochtitlan, small hours of Friday 19 February 1519

  Tozi understood the new power she had found. It was the power to magnify others’ fears.

  She had directed it at Moctezuma and magnified his fear that his bowels would betray him.

  She had directed it at Ahuizotl, who feared his deceit would be exposed, and driven him into a frenzy of terror.

  But she was under no illusions about Moctezuma’s decision to free Malinal from the killing stone. It had not happened because of anything she had done.

  In the highly charged moments that had passed since she’d attained the summit of the pyramid, Tozi had experienced a revelation. It was often said by the Mexica that their Great Speakers were in direct communication with Hummingbird and served as his agents and instruments on earth, but she’d always suspected such statements of being little more than boastful propaganda. Now she knew she had been wrong, for her witch gift had allowed her to see something dreadful lurking there amongst the priests and lords clustered round the killing stone, something that no one except Moctezuma was meant to see – the true spiritual source of all the horror and wickedness the Mexica inflicted upon the world.

  The war god himself.

  And to see him was to witness the apparition of ultimate evil incarnate in a phantasm of immense beauty – not a body of flesh and blood, Tozi had understood at once, but a vision-body, tall and powerful with luminous skin and a nimbus of golden hair and black, black eyes, and a sly, cruel smile delighting in fear and misery and pain.

  Delighting even in the fear and misery of the Great Speaker, whom he toyed with and taunted and confused by coming and going, slipping away through rifts in the fabric of the night into some invisible realm that lay beyond, only to return to pull the strings of his human puppet again and enforce his will upon him.

  It was this demonic entity, this god of the dark places of the human soul, who had ordered Malinal freed, who had held back the obsidian knife, who had clamped his phantom hand over Moctezuma’s nose and mouth and stifled his breathing and forced him to release her from the stone and then vanished again as though his work was done.

  Tozi would not have believed it if she had not seen it with her own eyes. But having seen it she was still left with the fundamental
question.

  Why?

  Why would such a being, nourished by the hearts of the victims Moctezuma offered him, have wanted anyone released?

  And why Malinal in particular?

  And was Tozi’s own freedom, which her friend had so courageously and selflessly required, also part of some diabolical plan?

  Malinal’s manner towards Moctezuma had been almost … intimate. But as Tozi ran to her side her voice snapped out like a whip. ‘Wait!’ she said, as though the Great Speaker were of no more consequence than a household slave. ‘There’s one more thing …’

  Tozi was acutely conscious of how the nobles gathered on the summit platform, the killing crew and the priests were all standing round with their mouths gaping in disbelief watching this impossible exchange.

  ‘There’s a boy,’ Malinal continued. ‘A little boy. He was imprisoned amongst the women in error. Ahuizotl sent him to the western stairway for sacrifice. If he still lives I want to take him with us.’

  All eyes turned towards the western altar. After the dramatic events of the past few moments the sacrifices there had ceased, as they had ceased also at the eastern altar – both these points being plainly visible in the bright light of torches and braziers, and less than a hundred feet distant from their present position.

  ‘A boy?’ said Moctezuma.