recreations of other sorts.
I called for Nocheztli and repeated the report. 'Prepare our forces. We will march two days from now. This time I want
Fortuitously, the very next day, Pozonali and Veronica returned to us, safely and together, and, though much fatigued from their long, hard ride, came immediately to report to me. So excited were they that they began speaking simultaneously in their separate languages of Nahuatl and Spanish.
'The goldsmith thanks you for your warning, Tenamaxtzin, and sends you his warm regards in return...'
'You are already famous in the City of Mexico, my lord. I should say famous and
'Wait, wait,' I said, laughing. 'Veronica first.'
'What I bring is the good news, my lord. To begin with, I did deliver your message to the Cathedral and, as you supposed, when your friend Alonso received it, whole troops of soldiers began combing the city to find the messenger who had brought it. But they could not, of course, I being indistinguishable from so many other girls like myself. And, as you commanded, I listened to many conversations. The Spaniards, by what means I do not know, are already aware that our whole army is encamped here in the Mixtoapan. So they are calling our insurrection 'the Mixton War,' and—I rejoice to report—it has much of New Spain in a panic. Whole families from the City of Mexico and from everywhere else are crowding into the seaports—Vera Cruz and Tampico and Campeche and every other —demanding passages back to Old Spain, on any kind of vessel sailing there—galleons, caravels, victualler ships,
'But not all of them,' said Iyac Pozonali, frowning. 'Despite Coronado's having taken so many of New Spain's soldiers on his northward expedition, the Viceroy Mendoza has still a considerable force in the City of Mexico, some hundreds of mounted and foot soldiers, and Mendoza has taken personal command of them. Furthermore, as you expected, Tenamaxtzin, many of his
'Our own people,' I said sadly, 'arrayed against us.'
'The city will maintain a sufficient defensive force,' Pozonali went on. 'Thunder-tubes and such. But I would reckon, from what I learned, that the Viceroy Mendoza plans an offensive march to rout us out of here and destroy us before we ever get near the City of Mexico.'
'Well, good luck to Mendoza,' I said offhandedly. 'However many his men, however well armed, they will be annihilated before they ever get to us here. I have experimented, and the Knight Pixqui was right when he said that these mountains are impregnable. In the meantime, I will be giving the viceroy further evidence of our might and our determination. Tomorrow we march east—every warrior, every horseman, every arcabuz man, every Purempe granada-thrower, every last one of us who can wield a weapon. We are marching against a city called Hot Springs, and after we have taken that, the Viceroy Mendoza may decide to try to
XXXII
Of the final battle of the 'Mixton War'—of our defeat and the
My army could still be here in the Miztoapan, entire and secure and healthy and strong and ready to do battle again, had I not taken them out of this valley. Just as we had earlier baited the Spanish trading post's soldiers into ambush here, so we were baited
I took my whole army, leaving in the valley only the slaves and those males too old or too young to do battle. It was a three-day march to Hot Springs, and even before we got within sight of it, I began to suspect that
It was a trap. I turned in my saddle to shout 'Retreat!' But it was already too late. Arcabuces now
Oh, we fought back, of course. The battle went on daylong, and many hundreds died on both sides. Death, that day, was a glutton. As I have remarked, any battle is a commotion and a confusion, and some of the dyings were done in curious ways. My knights Nocheztli and Pixqui both were pierced by balls discharged by
Since both our armies, mine and Mendoza's, were fairly equal in numbers and armament, it should have been a pitched battle, the victory going to the bravest and strongest and most clever. But what lost it for us was this. My men courageously engaged every white soldier they encountered, but too many of them (bar the Yaki) could not bring themselves to slaughter the men of their own race—the Mexica and Texcalteca and others—who were fighting on Mendoza's side. To the contrary, those traitors of our own race, naturally seeking to curry favor with their Spanish masters, hesitated not at all to slaughter
One of our battlefield ticiltin jerked the arrow out of me—painful enough, that—then daubed the open wound with the corrosive xocoyatl—so much
When finally night came down, our armies disengaged—what was left of them—and the ragged remnant of ours, those who had horses, hastily withdrew to the westward. Pozonali, one of the few survivors whom I knew by name, found Veronica on the hilltop whence she had watched the carnage, and brought her along as we made haste to get back to our mountain sanctuary. I could barely sit my saddle, so agonizing was the pain in my side, thus I was in no condition to worry about whether we were being pursued through the night.
If we were, the pursuers never caught up to us. Three days later—days of terrible pain for me, and I was not the worst wounded of us—we arrived again at the Miztoapan, and wound our way through the maze of ravines (often losing our way, since we had not the experienced Knight Pixqui to guide us) and finally, faint with thirst and hunger and fatigue and loss of blood, found our valley again.
I have not even tried to count the survivors of the Hot Springs battle, though I could probably do that without even scribbling down the little flags and trees and dots of numbers. Several who made it safely back here have since died of their wounds, because there are no ticiltin to treat them. All our ticiltin, like all our other hundreds of hundreds, are lying dead back yonder at Hot Springs. One Yaki ticitl is still alive, still with us, and he graciously offered to come and dance and chant at me, but I would be damned to Mictlan before I would submit to that kind of doctoring. So my wound has gradually festered, gone green, oozing pus. I blaze with fever, then shiver with chill