Simon Levack - Shadow of the Lords

Fox glowered at me. ‘Right. Here’s the lake …’

‘I think the shoreline should come out further west than that …’

‘Shut up. This is a map, not a work of bloody art. How far could they have gone? I need to know how big an area to cover.

I thought about that: the bigger the better, as far as I was concerned, since it meant the Otomies would have to divide themselves between more towns. ‘Hard to say …’

‘You told us they rested up the first night and we know one of them was too lame to walk.’ The captain’s voice was subdued, for him. He was clearly thinking about how he was going to keep control over his men if he had to disperse them widely over the countryside. ‘Even if he was walking by yesterday morning he won’t have been going very fast. He won’t be up for a climb either, so we can forget anywhere very high up. They certainly haven’t left the valley.’

Fox drove his harpoon repeatedly into the ground, reciting the name of a town with every blow. ‘Coyoacan, Mixcoa, Atlacuihuayan, Popotla, Tlacopan, Otoncalpolco, Azcatpotzalco …’

‘We have to search all of them?’ the captain asked in a disgusted voice.

‘I would,’ I said, ‘but if you go into any of them mob handed you’ll just attract attention and frighten your quarry off. Send a couple of men to each …’

He looked at me suspiciously. ‘And if you were our runaways, which town would you pick?’

‘The biggest,’ I said honestly.

‘Right.’ He looked briefly down at Fox’s map. ‘You and I are off to Tlacopan, then. They,’ he added with a glance at Handy and the steward, ‘can come with us. So can Fox. The rest of you split up how you like: two to each town and a couple to stay here in reserve. Let’s go!’

So we set off for Tlacopan — the captain, Fox, Handy, the steward and I.

It was going to take us the best part of the afternoon to reach it, but as I kept assuring my companions, it was the largest and most important town on the western side of the valley, and so easily the best prospect as our quarry’s hiding place.

Most of the journey was undertaken in silence. We had little to say to each other in any case, and every reason to keep our voices down. Although we avoided towns and there were not many people about in the fields, no part of the valley was ever quite empty and there was always the possibility that rumours of our approach would run ahead of us. It did not help that we all so obviously came from the great city at the centre of the lake.

The people who lived in these parts, the Tepanecs, were not barbarians. They spoke our language, and we thought of them as allies. Their ancestors had sprung from the womb of the World at the Seven Caves at the same time as ours. However, that did not mean they loved us.

Once, long before, the Aztecs had been the subjects of a Tepanec city, Azcapotzalco, which in those days had been so populous that it was known as the Anthill. It had been my master’s father, the great Lord Tlacaelel, who had persuadedthe Aztecs to rise against their masters, and when the revolt was over the city of Mexico had been freed and Azcapotzalco reduced to a small tributary town whose only claim to distinction was a big slave market.

Only one Tepanec city had sided with the Aztecs in the revolt. As a result of its help, Tlacopan was grudgingly admitted into an alliance with Mexico, but the Aztecs did not treat the Tepanecs as equals. Tlacopan got the smallest share of the spoils of war, and our Emperor treated its king as a subject in all but name. There were plenty of people living on the western side of the lake who had grown up with stories from their fathers and grandfathers of how Tepanecs had once ruled the World and made even the Emperor of Mexico do their bidding. Who could blame them if, from time to time — such as when they visited Mexico during one of the great festivals, when the tribute was distributed, and saw how meagre their shares were in comparison with the Aztecs’ — they wondered how it might be if the old order were restored?

‘So watch what you say and who you say it to,’ growled the captain, reminding us all of this history. ‘These people won’t try to kill you on sight, but if they see a chance to put one over on you, they’ll grab it!’

He set a brisk pace, driving us towards the town at a steady trot during the warmest part of the day. He barely broke into a sweat, despite being clad in quilted cotton from head to foot, and if Fox was finding the going any harder he was not about to show it. Handy, used to hard work in the fields in all weathers, ran on without complaint, the effort he was making showing only on his glistening brow and in the firm, determined set of his jaw.

As for me, I had been trained to manage feats of endurance and bear great pain without a murmur. In my time as a priest, I had been pierced all over with maguey spines, had slit openmy tongue and drawn ropes through it, had bathed naked in the lake at midnight and had fasted till I was faint with hunger. I ran now until my thighs and calves burned like raw flesh, my chest felt too weak even for shallow gasps and my tongue was a strip of dried meat dangling limply in my parched mouth, like a freshly skinned pelt hung up in the Sun. Then I kept running, with my discomfort set aside, my legs left to work by themselves, and the knowledge that when I was allowed to rest, that was when the real agony would set in.

Not long afterwards, the steward fell over.

‘I don’t believe this!’ the captain roared. He turned back, still running, towards the gasping, twitching heap by the roadside. ‘Don’t either of you sit down!’ he warned Handy and me as he passed us. ‘We’ll be off again as soon as he’s back on his feet. What’s the matter with you?’

Handy was doubled over, trying to massage some life back into his legs, while I kept mine straight in an effort to stop them buckling at the knee. ‘He hasn’t done this for a few years,’ I offered, between deep, painful breaths. ‘Not really part of his duties now.’

‘And he calls himself a warrior? Can’t stand a man who lets himself go soft. Come on, you, up!’

I felt dizzy, as if I had taken a very mild dose of sacred mushrooms. It made the spectacle of the mighty, one-eyed warrior jabbing my master’s steward roughly with his foot seem all the more unreal. Part of me wanted to summon up the last of my breath to cheer the captain on and urge him to kick the fallen man harder. The rest of me felt something like awe. Here was my tormentor, the Chief Minister’s steward, a man who treated me worse than a dog, suddenly made another man’s helpless victim. The sight made me wonder what the Otomi might do to a mere slave, if he thought he had cause.

‘Can’t go on,’ the steward gasped. ‘Have to rest.’ When he looked up at the captain his face was puce.

‘Bugger.’ The captain pivoted sharply on one foot and kicked a stone across the road with the other, no doubt wishing it was the steward’s head. ‘Nearly there, too!’

His brutal, ravaged face swung in my direction. I blinked the sweat out of my eyes and turned to follow his gaze.

I had been too caught up with putting one foot in front of the other to take much notice of the countryside, but now I saw that we were leaving the open fields. Just ahead of us the road was flanked by a long, low wall. Plum trees reached over it with naked, frost-stripped boughs. I glimpsed a house deep within the orchard, its whitewashed walls gleaming behind the dark cage-work of the branches.

Taller trees reared up beyond the orchard, the green of cypress and fir catching the sunlight and flashing brilliantly among the bare black skeletons of oak and ash. Farther away still, towering over the tallest of the trees, were the squared-off humps of Tlacopan’s pyramids.