‘I was just going home,’ I sobbed.
‘You were what?’ the man in front of me said incredulously.
Ollin said: ‘Down the middle of a canal? I don’t think so. Who sent you?’
‘Better search him for weapons,’ his comrade advised.
Ollin scrambled out of the water and began tugging at my sodden breechcloth, looking presumably for a concealed knife. ‘What are you, a spy or a hired killer?’
‘He doesn’t look like an otomi to me,’ the other warrior said. ‘No muscles on him at all.’
It began to dawn on me what was happening. These men had been expecting some associate of the captain’s or maybe even the dreaded otomi himself – which, of course, meant that whoever had stationed them here, it could not be my enemy. I opened my mouth to cry out my name and tell them that they had got it all wrong, but just at that moment the cramp struck my right leg with full force and I fell to my knees, squealing in agony.
Ollin casually stuffed a rag in my mouth to shut me up and continued rummaging inside my breechcloth for weapons. As I struggled at his feet he shoved me the rest of the way to the ground with a heel between my shoulder blades.
‘No knife or anything.’
‘Tie him up,’ Ollin ordered his comrade, ‘and leave that gag in his mouth. We’ll take him to the house and see what they make of him there.’
7
Before I could move or utter a protest the two warriors had trussed me up like a deer, lashing my legs to my arms with a coarse rope that they must have brought with them for the purpose. They carried me between them, bouncing me carelessly up and down as they strode briskly alongside the canal. At first I tried shouting through the gag, but I soon gave up. I knew I would be able to speak soon enough. I was face-down and could not see where I was going, but I had guessed by now that they were not going to take me very far.
They turned away from the canal path and into what looked like a courtyard, judging by the clean swept earth floor just beneath my nose. When they dropped me on the ground, I managed to turn my head to one side just quickly enough to avoid anything worse than a bruised cheek.
‘We’ve got one!’ crowed Ollin, his words echoing off the walls around us.
A male voice replied: ‘Well done, Ollin. Who is he?’
‘Don’t know that yet,’ the warrior admitted. ‘We thought we’d bring him back here to question him.’
‘Good idea! We’ll get a fire going and throw some chillies on it. We can smoke the truth out of him.’
As I grunted in impotent protest I heard another voice, this one a woman’s, saying: ‘Don’t you think we’d better take his gag off first? No point asking him anything if he can’t speak.’
I knew the speaker. She was my elder sister, Quetzalchalchihuitl or ‘Precious Jade’. The man she had spoken to was none other than my eldest brother: Lion, the Guardian of the Waterfront, my family’s pride and joy.
Ollin and his comrade had carried me to my parents’ house. The moment I recognised Lion’s voice I knew who the two warriors were: members of his bodyguard. He must have left them on sentry duty outside the house.
My elder brother’s plan would have involved building a fire in the courtyard, throwing some dried chillies on it, and then holding me over it until the choking and the pain in my nose, mouth and eyes had loosened my tongue. Fortunately, my gag was off and I was able to speak before the fire was hot enough.
‘Yaotl?’ my sister said, as soon as I had finished shouting. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘My brother,’ Lion said dully, as though his disappointment were too much to bear, before turning to his men. ‘I don’t believe it. You bagged my brother!’
I looked at Ollin and his colleague balefully while I tried to massage some feeling back into my legs and other members of my family emerged, one by one, through the doorways that surrounded the courtyard. All my relations seemed to have gathered there, as though for a festival. My mother and father stood together in one corner of the courtyard. The old woman’s faded blouse and skirt hung loosely from her frail-looking frame, while her husband stood upright, wrapped in the ancient orange two-captive warrior’s cloak that was still his proudest possession. Neither of them was quite what he or she seemed. My mother was vigorous enough to take her own wares to the market every day. My father was no weakling, but his left knee had been destroyed by a javelin, and being too stubborn to use a stick, he had taught himself over the years to stand without one. His infirmity was obvious the moment he took a step.
Also watching me were my brothers and sisters. I saw Tlacazolli, the second of my three brothers, a large, slow man a year or two younger than I, whose name meant ‘Glutton’. Near him were Copactecolotl, ‘Sparrowhawk’, a youngster proudly sporting the single lopsided lock of hair that meant he had taken one captive in war, and my younger sister Neuctli, or ‘Honey.’ Jade’s husband, Camaxtli, was there too, next to my elder sister; they were flanked by their grown up sons. Camaxtli and a couple of my nephews carried obsidian-tipped spears.
‘I don’t understand why you keep these two idiots around,’ I muttered, turning to my elder brother and gesturing towards Ollin and his comrade. ‘They’d be more useful as sacrifices!’
‘That’s not fair!’ the warrior appealed to his chief. ‘We saw him creeping along that canal. How were we
