Aztec Autumn

of New Galicia.'

That announcement pleased me as much as any of the others I had heard here. But I did hope that Padre Vasco, now that he was such an important dignitary, would not forswear his good works and good intentions and good nature. No doubt Pope Paulo would expect his newest bishop to wring from those Utopia colonists yet more contributions to what Alonso de Molina had called the pope's 'private King's Fifth.' Be that as it may, this also augured well for my and Esteban's scheme. Probably Bishop Zumarraga would see Bishop Quiroga as a rival, and be even more ready to send Fray Marcos scouting either for new souls or new riches for Mother Church.

I purposely delayed departing from that place until the four newcome soldiers had gone galloping on toward Compostela. Then I bade farewell to Esteban and Teniente Tallabuena, and they and all their troop—except the three white heroes and the Lying Monk—cordially waved me off. When Tiptoe and I rode on, leading our two extra horses, I turned us slightly northward from the direction the soldiers had gone, in what I hoped was the direction of Aztlan.

XVII

Not many days later, we were among mountains that I recognized from the journey with my mother and uncle. It was still early in the rainy season, but on the day we reached the easternmost bounds of the lands ruled by Aztlan, the god Tlaloc and his attendant tlaloque spirits were amusing themselves by making a storm. They jabbed down from the skies their forked sticks of lightning and thunderously shattered their immense water jars to pour rain down on the earth. Through that curtain of rain, I espied the glow of a campfire on a hillside not far ahead of us. I halted our little train among some concealing trees and waited for a flare of lightning to show me more. When it did, I counted five men, standing or crouching around a fire sheltered by a lean-to made of leafy branches. The men all appeared to be wearing the quilted-cotton armor of Azteca warriors, and seemed almost as if they had been put there to await our coming. If they were, I thought, this was a matter of some puzzlement, for how could anyone of Aztlan have known of our approach?

'Wait here, Tiptoe, with the horses,' I said. 'Let me make sure these are men of my people. Be prepared to turn and flee, if I signal that they are hostile.'

I strode alone out into the downpour and up the hillside. As I neared the group, I raised both hands to show that I was without any weapon, and called, 'Mixpantzinco!'

'Ximopanolti!' came the reply, sociably enough, and in the familiar accent of old Aztlan, good to hear again.

Another few steps and I was close enough to see—by the next lightning flash—the man who had replied. A familiar face from old Aztlan, but not one very pleasing to encounter again, because I well remembered what he was like. I imagine my voice reflected that, when I greeted him without much enthusiasm, 'Ayyo, Cousin Yeyac.'

'Yeyactzin,' he haughtily reminded me. 'Ayyo, Tenamaxtli. We have been expecting you.'

'So it would seem,' I said, glancing around at the four other warriors, all armed with obsidian-edged maquahuime. I supposed they were his current cuilontin lovers, but I did not remark on that. I said only, 'How did you know I was coming?'

'I have my ways of knowing,' said Yeyac, and a roll of thunder accompanying his words made them sound ominous. 'Of course, I had no idea it was my own beloved cousin coming home, but the description was close enough, I see now.'

I smiled, though I was not in a mood for smiling. 'Has our great-grandfather again been exercising his talent for far-seeing, then?'

'Old Canautli is long dead.' To that announcement the tlaloque added another deafening smashing of water jars. When Yeyac could be heard, he demanded, 'Now, where is the rest of your party? Your slave and the Spaniards' army horses?'

I was getting more and more disturbed. If Yeyac was not being advised by some Aztecatl far-seer, who was keeping him so well informed? I took note that he spoke of 'Spaniards,' not using the word Caxtilteca that had formerly been Aztlan's name for the white men. And I remembered how, just recently, I had been made uneasy when I learned that the Governor Guzman had set his province's capital city so close to ours.

'I am sorry to hear of great-grandfather's death,' I said levelly. 'And I am sorry, Cousin Yeyac, but I will report only to our Uey-Tecutli Mixtzin, not to you or any other lesser person. And I have much to report.'

'Then report it here and now!' he barked. 'I, Yeyactzin, am the Uey-Tecutli of Aztlan!'

'You? Impossible!' I blurted.

'My father and your mother never returned here, Tenamaxtli.' I made some involuntary movement at that, and Yeyac added, 'I regret having so many grievous tidings to impart'—but his eyes shifted away from mine. 'Word came to us that Mixtzin and Cuicani were found slain, apparently by bandits on the road.'

This was desolating to hear. But if it was true that my uncle and mother were dead, I knew from Yeyac's manner that they had not died at the hands of any strangers. More lightning flashes and thunder roars and lashings of rain gave me time to compose myself, then I said:

'What of your sister and her husband—what was his name?—Kauri, yes. Mixtzin appointed them to rule in his stead.'

'Ayya, the weakling Kauri,' Yeyac sneered. 'No warrior ruler, he. Not even a deft hunter. One day in these mountains he wounded a bear in the chase, and foolishly pursued it. The bear of course turned and dismembered him. The widow Ameyatzin was content to retire to matronly pastimes and have me take on the burden of governing.'

I knew that, too, to be untrue, because I knew Cousin Ameyatl even better than I knew Yeyac. She would never willingly have yielded her position even to a real man, let alone this contemptible simulacrum whom she had always derided and despised.

'Enough of this dallying, Tenamaxtli!' Yeyac snarled. 'You will obey me!'

'I will? Just as you obey the white Governor Guzman?'

'No longer,' he said, unthinking. 'The new governor, Coronado—'

He shut his mouth, but too late. I knew all I needed to know. Those four Spanish riders had arrived in Compostela to arrest Guzman, and they had mentioned meeting me and Tiptoe on their way. Perhaps, by then, they had begun to wonder about the legitimacy of my churchly 'mission,' and made their suspicions known. Whether Yeyac had been there in Compostela, or had heard the word later, no matter. He was clearly in league with the white men. What else this might mean—whether all of Aztlan and its native Azteca and resident Mexica had similarly donned the Spanish yoke—I would find out in good time. Right now, I had to contend only with Yeyac. In the next lull of the storm's commotion, I said warningly:

'Take care, man of no manhood.' And I reached for the steel knife at my waist. 'I am no longer the untried younger cousin you remember. Since we parted, I have killed—'

'No manhood?' he bellowed. 'I too have killed! Would you be my next?'

His face was contorted with rage as he raised high his heavy maquahuitl and stepped toward me. His four companions did the same, right behind him, and I backed away, wishing I had brought with me some weapon more formidable than a knife. But suddenly, all those menacing black blades of obsidian turned to glittering silver, because Tlaloc's lightning forks began to jab and jab and jab in rapid sequence, close about the six of us. I was not expecting the thing that happened next, though I was gratified and not very much surprised when it did happen. Yeyac took another step, but backward this time, reeling, and his mouth opened wide in a cry that went unheard in the immediately succeeding tumult of thunder, and he dropped his sword and fell heavily on his back with a great splash of mud.

There was no need for me to fend off his four underlings. They all stood immobile, maquahuime lifted and streaming rainwater, as if the lightning had petrified them in that position. Their mouths were as wide open as Yeyac's, but in astonishment, awe and fright. They could not have seen, as I had, the bright, wet, red hole that had opened in the cotton quilting of Yeyac's belly armor, and none of us had heard the sound of the arcabuz that had done that. The four cuilontin could only have assumed that I had, by some magic, called down upon their leader the forked sticks of Tlaloc. I gave them no time to think otherwise, but bawled, 'Down weapons!'