Aztec Autumn

showed white all around. The movement of his head was deliberate, to cause my blade to cut his throat skin slightly, so that everyone could see a trickle of blood run down his neck.

'Ground your arms, men!' Coronado commanded the soldiers, who were alternately gaping at him and at our slow, wary progress. 'Stand as you are. No firing, no swordplay. I had rather lose both the prisoners than that single miserable Moro.'

I called to him, 'Tell one of them, senor, to run outside before us, and loudly to inform every soldier in the vicinity. We are not to be molested or impeded. When we are safely gone beyond the town, I will release your precious Moro unharmed. You do have my word on that.'

'Yes,' said Coronado, through gritted teeth. He motioned to a soldier near the door. 'Go, Sargento. Do as he says.'

Circling well clear of us, the soldier scuttled out the door. Ualiztli and I and the limp, goggle-eyed Esteban were not far behind. No one pursued us as we followed that soldier along a short hall I had not been in before, and down a flight of stairs, and out through the palace's street door. The soldier was already shouting as we three emerged. And there, at a hitching rack, as Esteban had arranged, a saddled horse was waiting for us.

I said, 'Ticitl Ualiztli, you will have to run alongside. I am sorry, but I had not counted on your company. I will hold the horse to a walk.'

'No, by Huitztli, go at a gallop!' the physician exclaimed. 'Old and stout though I am, I am eager enough to be out of here that I will move like the wind!'

'In the name of God,' growled Esteban, under his breath. 'Cease your gibbering and move! Fling me across the saddle and leap up behind and go!'

As I heaved him atop the horse—actually, he bounded and I only seemed to impel him—our herald-soldier was crying commands to everyone within hearing, 'Make way! Safe passage!' All the other people in the street, soldiers and citizens alike, were gawking numbly at this remarkable spectacle. Not until I was seated behind the saddle's cantle, now holding Esteban's knife ostentatiously pointed at his kidneys, did I realize that I had neglected to unhitch the horse from the rail. So Ualiztli had to do that, and handed the reins up to me. Then, true to his word, the ticitl waddled off at a speed commendable in one of his age and girth, enabling me to put the horse to a trot beside him.

When we were out of sight of the palace, and out of hearing of that soldier's shouts, Esteban—though being jounced while hanging uncomfortably head down—began giving me directions. Turn right at the next street, left at the next and so on, until we were beyond the city's center and out in one of the mean quarters where the slaves lived. Not many of those were about—most were doing slave work somewhere at this hour—and the few we saw took care to avert their eyes. They probably supposed us—two indios and a Moro—to be slaves also, employing a truly unique mode of escape, and wanted to be able to say, should they be questioned, that they had seen nothing of us.

When we reached Compostela's outskirts, where even the slave shacks were few and far apart and no one at all was in sight, Esteban said, 'Stop here.' He and I clambered down from the horse and the ticitl collapsed full length on the ground, panting and sweating. While Esteban and I rubbed the sore places on our bodies—he his stomach and I my rump—he said:

'This is as far as I can play hostage to your safety, Juan Britanico. There will be Spanish outposts beyond, and they will not have got the word to let us pass. So you and your companion will somehow have to make your own way, on foot, and stealthily. I can only wish you good fortune.'

'Which we have had thus far, thanks to you, amigo. I trust that fortune will not desert us now, when we are so near to freedom.'

'Coronado will not order a pursuit until he has me back in one piece. As I told you, and as events have proved, the ambitious governor and the avaricious friar dare not endanger my black hide. So—' He climbed stiffly back onto the saddle, right side up this time. 'Hand me the knife.' I did, and he used it to rip his clothes in several places, and even to nick his skin here and there, just enough to draw blood, then gave the knife back to me.

'Now,' he said, 'use the reins to tie my hands tight to the saddle pommel here. To give you as much of a running start as I can, I will plod only slowly back to the palace. I can plead weakness from having been cruelly cut and beaten by you savages. Be glad that I am black; no one will notice that I am not bruised all over. More than that I cannot do for you, Juan Britanico. As soon as I get to the palace, Coronado will fan out his whole army to look for you, turning over every least pebble. You must be far, far from here by then.'

'We will be,' I said. 'Either safely deep in our native forests or securely deep in that dark place you Christians call hell. We thank you for your kind help, for your bold imagination and for your putting yourself at hazard on our behalf. Go you, amigo Esteban, and I wish you joy in your own freedom soon to be realized.'

XXII

'What do we do now, Tenamaxtzin?' asked Ualiztli, who had recovered his breath and was sitting up.

'As the Moro said, there has not been time for the governor to have sent word to his guard posts, to let us—if we still held our hostage—pass unhindered. Therefore, neither will they have been alerted to expect us at all. They will, as usual, be looking outward, for enemies trying to enter the town, not leave it. Just follow me, and do as I do.'

We walked upright until we were past the last shanties of the slave quarter, then we stooped over and went very, very cautiously farther out from the town until I espied, at a distance, a shack with soldiers around it, none of them looking our way. We went no nearer to that, but turned left and kept on until we saw another such shack and soldiers, these standing around one of those thunder-tubes, the kind called a culebrina. So we turned back and retraced our path until we were about midway between those guard posts. Happily for us, at that spot a dense underbrush stretched away toward a tree line on the horizon. Still stooping, duck-walking, I led the way into those bushes, staying below the tops of them, trying not to shake any of them, and the ticitl—though again panting heavily—did likewise. It seemed to me that we had to endure that awkward, cramped, excruciating, slow progress for countless one-long-runs—and I know it was far more fatiguing and painful for Ualiztli—but we did, at long last, reach the line of trees. Once within them, I gratefully stretched erect—all my joints creaking—and the ticitl again sprawled full length on the ground, groaning.

I lay down nearby and we both rested for a luxurious while. When Ualiztli had regained breath enough to speak, but not yet strength enough to stand, he said:

'Would you tell me, Tenamaxtzin, why did the white men let us leave? Surely not just because we took with us one of their black slaves. A slave of any color is as expendable as spittle.'

'They believe that particular slave holds the secret to a fabulous treasure. They are foolish to think so—but I will explain all that another time. Right now, I am trying to think of some way to find the Cuachic Nocheztli and the rest of our army.'

Ualiztli sat up and gave me a worried look. 'You must be still unsettled of mind, from that blow to your head. If all our men were not slain by the thunder-sticks, they are bound to have scattered and fled far from this place by now.'

'They were not and they did not. And I am not deranged. Please stop talking physician's talk, and let me think.' I glanced upward; Tonatiu was already slipping down the sky. 'We are again north of Compostela, so we cannot be too far from where we were ambushed. Would Nocheztli have kept the warriors assembled hereabouts? Or led them south of the town, as originally intended? Or even started them back to Aztlan? What would he have done, not knowing what had become of me?'

The ticitl considerately refrained from comment.

'We cannot simply go wandering about in search of them,' I went on. 'Nocheztli must find us. I can think of nothing but to make a signal of some sort, and hope it attracts him hither.'

The ticitl could not keep silent for long. 'Best hope it does not attract the Spanish patrols that are certain to be looking for us very soon.'

'It would be the last thing they would expect,' I said. 'That we would deliberately call attention to our hiding place. But if our own men are anywhere about, they must be near frenzied for some news of their leader. Anything out of the ordinary ought to draw at least a scout. A big fire should do it. Thanks be to the earth goddess Coatlicue, there are many pines among these trees, and the ground is thick with dry needles.'