Neutemoc was the first to shake his head. 'Too damp,' he said. 'Unless you have a spell.'
'You don't summon gods for trifles,' I said.
Neutemoc smiled, briefly. 'Then we'll just be damp, won't we?'
Palli, Ezamahual and the slave Tepalotl were walking back towards us. Ezamahual was carrying the limp body of the owl in his hands, and looking puzzled.
'Nothing,' Palli said, curtly, when they reached the camp. 'Not a trace of anything magical.'
'Good,' Neutemoc said. He inclined his head a fraction. 'Thank you.'
I couldn't help feeling relieved. It was one thing to have Ceyaxochitl's assurances that all would be well once we left Tenochtitlan, and another to actually see it happen.
Palli, Ezamahual and Tepalotl took their share of food, and drew back from us: my two priests at the edge of the camp, talking quietly among themselves, and Neutemoc's slave a bit further, standing guard in the darkness.
Neutemoc didn't speak for a while. He reached for one of the maize flatbreads, and cradled it in the palm of his hands, staring at the darkening skies.
'It brings one back,' he said at last. 'All of this.'
I swallowed a bite of my flatbread. If he was in a talkative mood, I'd be a fool not to draw him out, to understand why someone was threatening him. Although I feared it was going to cost me. So far, I hadn't seen much to explain why he'd behaved in such a spectacularly foolish fashion. 'It must have changed in sixteen years.'
'Not that much,' Neutemoc said. 'Places don't change. People – that's another story.' His voice was bitter.
'Eleuia?' I asked.
Neutemoc didn't answer for a while. 'Let's not bring her up, shall we? We'll disagree. And I wasn't thinking about her.'
He was in a melancholy mood tonight. 'About whom, then?' I asked.
He smiled, a flash of white teeth in the growing darkness. 'There was a time when all I wanted was the certainty that I would live until the morrow.'
'War is that way.' I felt like an impostor. I'd never been to war, after all.
Two days ago, Neutemoc would have risen to the bait, taunting me with what I'd failed to accomplish with my life. 'Life was simpler, back then,' he said.
'Yes.' I thought of my small temple in Coyoacan, of comforting the bereaved, tracking down underworld monsters. Simple things. But life, it seemed, was no longer that simple, either for Neutemoc or for me.
Neutemoc finished the last of his flatbread, and wiped his hands clean. 'Things change. You grow stale, complacent. Sometimes, you deserve your own fall.'
Stale? Yes, stale. His growing indifference to Huei had certainly done little to close the growing breach between them. As for his attempted adultery with Eleuia…
He went on, 'When I first came here with the army, I used to go for walks at night, to think on the following day's battle. One night, I met an old peasant carrying a basket of maize kernels. He asked what I wanted to do with my life. I told him of my dreams – to earn fame and fortune on the battlefield; to have a grand house, and a loving wife, and to move through the Imperial circles.'
The story's familiarity pulled me from my angry thoughts. 'And?' I asked, though I suspected where the story was going.
'He just smiled. 'You will have all of this and more, young warrior. But remember: I always hold the dice.' And he was gone as though he'd never been.'
I nodded. 'Tezcatlipoca.' The Smoking Mirror, God of War and Fate: He who controlled the destinies of men.
'Whoever he was, he was right.' Neutemoc sighed. 'Life is just another, vaster patolli board on which the gods move us at Their whim. The things you have, you can lose so easily. They're just not worth holding.'
'You're a warrior,' I said, finally. 'You're not supposed to wallow in your own misery.'
Neutemoc's eyes flashed in anger, but he didn't answer. 'We need someone to stand guard,' he said, rising. He walked to where Palli and Ezamahual sat, and said something to them in a low voice. They nodded.
Neutemoc came back, and lay down on the ground, ready to sleep. 'They'll take turns,' he said.
I nodded, not feeling inclined to talk further with him.
'We'll reach Amecameca tomorrow at noon,' Neutemoc said. 'There's a hill where Eleuia buried the body of her child. You'll see for yourself that he's dead.'
I shrugged. 'Maybe.' Even if my instincts were wrong, and the child had nothing to do with this, something had happened in the Chalca Wars: something that Eleuia had wanted to hide so badly she'd been ready to kill for it.
I woke up at dawn, my clothes soaked by the mud and the morning dew. Neutemoc was already up. He was going through some exer cises with his macuahitl sword, hacking and slashing at cacti as if they'd personally offended him.
Palli, Ezamahual and I withdrew from the camp, making our offerings of blood to Lord Death. The sky was cloudy, and the sun nowhere to be seen: a gloomy, wet pall stretched over the marshes, clinging to everything it touched. I hoped it wouldn't rain today. There were few more unpleasant things than finding oneself without shelter on marshy ground.
We ate one of the flatbreads, waiting for Neutemoc to finish killing innocent plants.
'Feeling frustrated?' I asked.
He didn't even rise to my jibe. 'Let's get this over with, shall we?'
We walked the rest of the way to Amecameca, with the snowcapped heights of Popocatepetl's and Ixtaccihuatl's volcanoes looming ever larger over us.
