of the jaguar, the long-drawn hoots of the owl, the alalalala! of the parrot. We learned to caper in feigned eagerness for battle, to menace with broad gestures, to threaten with grimaces, to pound our shields in drumming unison until they were stained with the blood of our hands.
Some other nations had weapons different from those we Mexica relied on, and some of our own units of warriors were equipped with arms for particular purposes, and even an individual might choose always to use whichever weapon he had become most proficient with. Those other arms included the leather sling for throwing rocks, the blunt stone ax for bludgeoning, the heavy mace whose knob was studded with jagged obsidian, the three-pointed spear of bones barbed at the ends so they inflicted a tearing wound, or the sword fashioned simply of the toothed snout of the sawfish. But the basic weapons of the Mexica were four.
For the opening encounter with an enemy, at a long distance, there was the bow and arrow. We students practiced for a long time with arrows tipped only with soft balls of oli instead of sharp obsidian. For example, one day the Master formed twenty or so of us into a line and said:
'Suppose the enemy are in that patch of nopali cactus.' He indicated what was to my fogbound vision only a green blur some hundred strides away. 'I want full pull on the bowstring and I want your arrows angled upward, exactly midway between where the sun stands and the horizon below him. Ready? Take stable stance. Now take aim at the cactus. Now let fly.'
There was a swooshing noise, then the boys groaned in concert. All the arrows had arced to the ground in a respectably tight grouping and at the hundred-strides distance of the cactus patch. But that was thanks to Blood Glutton's having specified the pull and the angle. The boys groaned because they had all been equally and dismally off target; the arrows had landed far to the left of the cactus. We looked to the Master, waiting for him to tell us how we could have aimed so wrong.
He gestured at the square and rectangular battle ensigns whose staffs were stuck here and there in the ground about us. 'What are these cloth flags for?' he asked.
We looked at each other. Then Pactli, son of the Lord Red Heron, replied, 'They are guidons to be carried by our separate unit leaders in the field. If we get scattered during a battle, the guidons show us where to regroup.'
'Correct, Pactzin,' said Blood Glutton. 'Now, that other flag, that long feather pennant, what is it for?'
There was another exchange of glances, and Chimali ventured timidly, 'We carry it to show pride that we are Mexica.'
'That is the wrong answer,' said the Master, 'but a manly one, so I will not whip you. But observe that pennon, my boys, how it floats upon the wind.'
We all looked. There was not enough of a breeze that day to hold the banner straight out from its staff. It hung at an angle to the ground and—
'It is blowing to our left!' another boy shouted excitedly. 'We did not aim wrong! The wind carried our arrows away from the target!'
'If you miss your target,' the Master said drily, 'you have aimed wrong. Blaming it on the wind god does not excuse it. To aim correctly, you must consider the force and direction in which Ehecatl is blowing his wind trumpet. That is the purpose of the feather pennon. Which way it hangs shows you which way the wind will carry your arrows. How high it hangs shows you how strongly the wind will carry them. Now, all of you march down there and retrieve your arrows. When you get there, turn about, from a line, and aim at me. The first boy who hits me will be excused for ten days from even his deserved whippings.'
(We did not march, we ran for the arrows, and quite gleefully sent them back at the cuachic, but not one of us hit him.)
For fighting at a nearer range than arrow shot, there was the javelin, a narrow, pointed blade of obsidian on a short shaft. Unfeathered, it depended for accuracy and piercing power upon its being thrown with utmost strength.
'So you do not hurl the javelin unaided,' said Blood Glutton, 'but with this atlatl throwing-stick. It will seem a clumsy method at first, but after much practice you will feel the atlatl to be what it is: a lengthening of your arm and a doubling of your strength. At a distance of as many as thirty long strides, you can drive the javelin clear through a tree as thick as a man. So imagine, my boys, what it will do when you fling it at a man.'
There was also the long spear, with a broader and heavier obsidian head, for jabbing, thrusting, piercing before an enemy got really close to you. But, for the inevitable hand-to-hand fighting, there was the sword called the maquahuitl. It sounds innocent enough, 'the hunting wood,' but it was the most terrible and lethal weapon in our armory.
The maquahuitl was a flat stave of the very hardest wood, a man's-arm long and a man's-hand wide, and all along both edges of its length were inset sharp flakes of obsidian. The sword's handle was long enough for wielding the weapon with one hand or with both, and it was carefully carved to fit the grip of that weapon's owner. The obsidian chips were not merely wedged into the wood; so much depended on that sword that even sorcery was added to it. The flakes were cemented solidly with a charmed glue made of liquid oli, the precious perfumed copali resin, and fresh blood donated by the priests of the war god Huitzilopochtli.
Obsidian makes a wicked-looking arrowhead or spear or sword edge, as shiny as quartz crystal but as black as the afterworld Mictlan. Properly flaked, the stone is so keen that it can cut as subtly as a grass-blade sometimes does, or cleave as deep as any bludgeon ax. The stone's one weakness is its brittleness; it can shatter against a foe's shield or against his opposing sword. But, in the hands of a trained fighter, the obsidian-edged maquahuitl can slash a man's flesh and bone as cleanly as if he were a clump of weeds—and in all-out war, as Blood Glutton never ceased reminding us, the enemy are but weeds to be mowed.
Just as our practice arrows, javelins, and spears were tipped with oli gum, so were our mock maquahuime made harmless. The stave was of light, soft wood, so the sword would break before it dealt a too punishing blow. And instead of obsidian chips, the edges were outlined only with tufts of feather down. Before any two students fought a sword duel, the Master would wet those tufts with red paint, so that every blow received would register as vividly as a real wound, and the mark would last almost as long. In a very short time, I was cross-hatched with wound marks, face and body, and I was quite embarrassed to be seen in public. Then it was that I requested a private audience with our cuachic. He was a tough old man, hard as obsidian, and probably uneducated in anything besides war, but he was no stupid clod.
I stooped to make the gesture of kissing the earth and, still kneeling, said, 'Master Blood Glutton, you already know that my eyesight is poor. I fear you are wasting time and patience in trying to teach me to soldier. If these marks on my body were real wounds, I should have been dead long since.'
'So?' he said coolly. Then he squatted to my level. 'Fogbound, I will tell you of a man I once met down in Quautemalan, the country of The Tangled Wood. Those people, as perhaps you know, are all timorous of death. This particular man scampered from every least suspicion of danger. He avoided the most natural risks of existence. He burrowed away in snug security. He surrounded himself with physicians and priests and sorcerers. He ate only the most nutritious foods, and he seized eagerly on every life-preserving potion he heard of. No man ever took better care of his life. He lived only to go on living.'
I waited for more, but he said no more, so I asked, 'What became of him, Master Cuachic?'
'He died.'
'That is all?'
'What else ever becomes of any man? I no longer remember even his name. No one remembers anything at all about him, except that he lived and then he died.'
After another silence, I said, 'Master, I know that if I am slain in war my dying will nourish the gods, and they will amply reward me in the afterworld, and perhaps my name will not be forgotten. But might I not be of some service in this world for a while before I achieve my dying?'
'Strike just one telling blow in battle, my boy. Then, even if you are slain the next moment, you will have done something with your life. More than all those men who merely drudge to exist until the gods tire of watching their futility and sweep them off to oblivion.' Blood Glutton stood up. 'Here, Fogbound, this is my own maquahuitl. It long served me well. Just feel the heft of it.'
I will admit that I experienced a thrill when for the first time I held a real sword, not a toy weapon of corkwood and feathers.
It was most atrociously heavy, but its very weight said, 'I am power.'
'I see that you lift it and swing it with one hand,' observed the Master. 'Not many boys your age could do
