Clash of Star-Kings (12 page)

“On the whole,” he said, thoughtfully reaching for his gigantic mustache-cup of coffee, “on the whole, I tend to think that the first one proposes far fewer problems.”

Jacob asked, “What’s to do about it, then?”

Macauley smiled. “Find out about it! I wouldn’t go near that pseudo-Aztec crowd with a ten-foot ack-ack gun. But Luis seems impressed with the good will of the pseudo-Olmec/Toltec boys. I vote that we take a nice hike up in the general direction of Uncle Popo and see what we can see.”

The vote went with
aye
.

Jacob, afterwards, was not sure that it should not have been
ai!

• • •

Huitzilopochtli blared and brayed his rage and his delight. “You have done well, you have done well, woman!” His Dragon-Head and blunt-beaked muzzle darted up and down. “We have returned to reward you all and we will reward you all, but we have also returned in that we are necessitous of obtaining once and for all the Great Heart of Tlaloc. And now that we know that the Great Old Ones, our enemies, have returned as well, it is certain that we know that they, too, seek this Puissant Object. They know where it is — they must know! For it is they who malignantly concealed it in the first place!”

And his fellows stamped and howled and it was agreed by all of them that they would go up to Popo and espy out all there was to espy, and then decide on what was to be done.

And thus it was Jacob and Macauley and Luis were observed as they climbed. And were followed, as the sun sank and the shadows grew.

The immense golden-bronze bell voice of the Elder Old One was raised but a single note, yet it seemed that all the sounds of the forest and the night fell silent and hearkened to it. “We have not been here long,” he said, “nevertheless, we have been here long enough. Both the lights and the smokes of our vessel have been seen on Popo. There has been talk, suspicion must follow, eventually attempts to investigate will be made. I believe it would not be well for our star-ship to be seen where it is concealed within the upper crater of the mountain which once smoked itself.”

The lids of his benign eyes lifted but a trifle more, the golden and glowing pupils flashed a message to his fellows and to the Moxtomí. “The synchronism of events is distuibing. It cannot be helped that both the Huitzili-things and the forces of the present government of this land are both now intent upon the same mission as we are, though for far different reasons. The alien and evil enemy may begin at any time to proceed against the hidden Object. We know what time the military intends to begin: tomorrow.

“I say that we have, accordingly, only this single night in which to accomplish our intention. If any have reason to gainsay me: speak. I wait. I listen.”

The night was silent, the fire glowed, reflecting glowing sparks in both the golden eyes and the brown ones. Old Santiago Tue said at length, “I know of nothing that we Moxtomi, your servants, can say against your words. Go,
Viejos Poderosos
— go, Lords, and we will follow.”

The lips of the Great Old Ones moved in mild smiles and their eyes exchanged consent. Their senior said, gently, “It will be in this way, younger brothers: let the Moxtomi go before, as befits their position of prime dwellers in this land. And
we
will follow.”

Old Tuc rose from his haunches and fell upon his knees. “It is too much honor,” he murmured. Then he got to his feet and gave crisp orders, pointing with his finger and naming names. In a very few moments only, the pueblo of San Juan Bautista Moxtomi was left in the charge of its women and children and patron saint. And the silent night was penetrated by the slight but sustained sounds of marching feet. Domingo Deuh went before, with a torch in one hand and a spear, formed of a knife lashed to a pole, in the other. Behind him came
Tata
Tue, holding a censer of burning coals of the old pre-Spanish fashion in one piece, and a pouch of beads of copal-gum, from which he, from time to time, took a pinch and cast it on the embers. Behind him came a man with the pueblo’s single shotgun, then the other men, armed with clubs, knives, and improvised but, nonetheless, deadly spears.

And behind them, carrying nothing which the Moxtomí knew to be weapons, but serene and utterly self-confident, huge bodies and massive limbs, towering so high that they now and then were obliged to lift their hands and push away thick and overhanging limbs as though they were mere twigs, came the Great Old Ones.

They wore only what seemed to be the lightest of garments and the Indians were swathed from chin to calf in thick, blue-black serapes; but neither appeared in the least bothered by the bitter-cold mists which wreathed the trees and paths like wraiths and parted only before the chill winds which now and again blew gustily down from the snowy mountains behind them.

The group did not always take the best-known and most-worn paths, those which followed at an easy slope to avoid difficulties of the terrain; but frequently they availed thernselves of shortcuts of the most precipitous kind. Yet not so much as a pebble was dislodged, and all difficulties vanished before their feet as though magically smoothed away.

By and by the intense cold grew less and the descent of the land less abrupt. They halted. The Indians consulted among themselves a moment. Then old Tuc turned to the towering figure of the Elder Old One.

“Lord, here we can take one of two paths,” he said. “This, to the left, is unavoidably longer than this, to the right. But the one to the right connects with the old road from Ixta, and — ”

“And there the evil Huitzili-things are encamped. I understand. It would be well to avoid them. They have often defeated us. They may defeat us again. It is possible. It is possible that we may defeat them. Or we may miss them or they miss us altogether. Indeed, all things are possible, except that none may miss Time and none may hope to defeat Him.

“Therefore: the path to the right.”

In a moment all had passed: torch, censer, Indians, aliens. Nothing remained to mark their passage but a fallen and trampled leaf and on the still, chill air the fragrant smell of copal-gum.

• • •

The Huitzilopochtli paused, lowered its monstrous head. Behind him … well behind him … one of its men-priests said, “Dragon-Head, Drinker of Blood, the path to Moxtomi-town and thence to Popo lies in the other direction. Pardon your slave: pardon, pardon — ”

“It is neither the town as a place nor the mountain as a place which concerns us,” the Huitzili said, subduing its terrible voice to a muted murmur. “We are concerned with the creatures called the Great Old Ones: principally concerned with them: and I smell that they have passed along this way and that they have turned down that way. More: many men have passed with them, and their bodies contain beating hearts and their bodies contain the essence of life, which is blood … which is blood….”

The voice died away to a drone, the fearful head wagged as it turned. Its fellows droned their understanding and their acceptance, they turned, too. And the men-priests and the women, too, understood, turned … shivered with more than the cold wind and the freezing mists and icy dews … shivered with anticipation and exultation.

“Blood …”

“Blood …”

They turned, swung about, followed the lead figure. Its monstrous snout, which only the monstrous imagination of the Aztecs could have likened to that of a hummingbird, swung from side to side, snuffing up the wind, gathering information from the lingering scents along earth and air. From time to time it muttered, “…
men
…” and from time to time it mumbled, “…
hearts
…” and from time to time it droned, “…
blood … blood …”

Gorgeous in glittering embossment and plumage, hideous in masklike visage, the other Aztec “gods” went clinking and clattering, stumbling-dancing, swaying-stamping, flapping-prancing, bawling and braying reduced to a minimum — stopped abruptly as the chief Huitzili-thing stopped in front where it had been smelling as it ran, like a dog.

“Other men were here,” it grunted, half-pleased, half-annoy ed. “Three other men…. All paused a while but not a great while…. Odd. No anger. I smell no anger. Different men, quite different, but no anger between them. How perverted. Enough!” The great head swung up once more. “Onward and after them! For we seek the Puissant Object called the Great Heart of Tlaloc and it may be that they will lead us to it, after which, if so, we will accept their hearts and drink their blood and nourish our needs. But let us be wary of both entrapmeiits and willful resistance, never forgetting how perversion engenders a disposition towards both.”

In another moment all had passed in the darkness, leaving behind a trampled leaf and an odor of rotting blood, of hatred hot as fire, of stale sweats engendered by alien suns and ancient lusts, and of hungers long unappeased by never so loathsome feasts under never so distant moons.

Far away, far down the valley, a dog sleeping behind a heap of corm raised its muzzle and widened its nostrils. For a moment it stayed quite rigid. Then it shivered violently, a deep growl muted in its chest; and then it lifted its head and it howled.

Luis moved as fast as any of them, but he heard scarcely a word which was said. His eyes were glazed with bliss and his face wore an expression of frozen joy. A song sang in his heart and in his head, and its words were of the true old gods, the veritable angels, the return of the proper patron saints of the Moxtomi-Toltec-Olmec peoples, older than either the god or angels or saints of Mexican Christendom. Its words were of the terribly long delayed, but now about to be realized, return of the great days, with all things to be as they were, not only before the Spanish conquest but before the Aztec conquest as well. Sometimes his words passed his lips and sometimes they did not, but he was scarcely aware of this, either.

The Elder Old One said, “You are called Roberto?”

“Yes, Your Reverence,” Macauley answered, feeling more than a little confused, but desiring very much to be polite, at all events.

“What is that, Roberto, which you have with you?”

Ahead, tight, tiny, the few lights of Los Remedios had begun to gleam an uncertain welcome in the black velvet fabric of the night.

“Why, it’s called
dynamite
, Your Honor…. I used to be a miner, that’s to say — but I guess you know. Anyway, more or less out of habit, I generally have some on hand in case of who-knows-what. These are sticks of dynamite, these are detonation caps, fuses — ” He explained the uses and applications as they proceeded on towards the town.

The Elder Old One nodded. “Crude, but effective in a limited way. We will hope its use will not be necessary. Perceive: that light which appears to be burning in the middle of the air: it is on top of the hill now called Monte Sagrado?”

Macauley nodded. “Yes…. And the entrance I suggest is on the other side of the hill. For that reason as well as the obvious one of secrecy, I suggest that we go around the town instead of trying to go through it.” He took out a Cuautla
puro
and lit it and let a mouthful of smoke billow out.

He had scarcely taken a second puff when a dog howled somewhere off in the distance and one of the Moxtomi gave a fearful exclamation. They halted, on one leg, so to speak, turned behind them without precisely knowing why. The wind veered about and struck them in the face and they recoiled. “The Huitzili! They are following us!” a Moxtomí cried, as the telltale air brought its message.

Macauley grunted. “Come on, then,” he said. “Double-time!”

The ground along the rough semi-circle which they had to cover in turning the town was broken up by fields and gulleys, hills and hummocks, the narrow-gage railroad tracks of both the main line and the spurs. It was not smooth going. Once they had to veer to avoid the unfinished walls of the bullring, and once Jacob slid and would have fallen into the gaping foundation of a grain elevator if Macauley had not caught him. Already behind them they could hear the
thumpthump-thumpthump
of the pursuing feet, and the not-quite-describable sound of voices, both human and quasi-human, allowing excitement and fury to unbridle the restraints of caution.

The troops of the first Montezuma had passed this way, doing a deadly work of execution with those war clubs inset with small blades of obsidian along the sides. Cortez had passed on the same path, with mounted men in armor upon armored horses, the Indians, at first and for long, assuming the two to be one creature, like a centaur. The swarming rebel forces of patriot-priest Morelos; the gaudily uniformed cavalry of the supreme military mountebank, His Serene Highness General Santa Anna; the red-bloomered zouaves of the French Foreign Legion; the shabby but deadly determined Constitutionalist troops of President Juarez; the beautifully tailored, efficiently tyrannical
rurales
of President Diaz; every conceivable kind and type of revolutionary band and army — all had come this way and gone this way, and the town had been in its place and remained in its place, had sometimes watched and sometimes (in the person of its people) fled and sometimes resisted and sometimes surrendered —

But never had the hills and fields observed any stranger sight than they did now, and yet the town stayed still and silent, the town slumbered and the town slept.

Always those who mounted the wide and shallow steps leading up around the
Monte Sagrado
had mounted slowly and gravely and in reverence … but not now. No one climbed slowly and painfully and penitentially upon hands and knees, no one paused to genuflect before the Stations of the Cross, not a hair was torn out nor a garment rent to supply an offering to the
ahuehuete
trees. The steps were leaped by twos and threes and then the formal steps were left behind and the running feet raced along a tiny dirt path. A time-stained picture behind cracked glass showed the painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe, as painted miraculously upon the mantle of Juan Diego, in the fitful light of the tiniest of lamps … the niche was beside a door ancient and massive of wood, reinforced with wrought-iron and locked with an enormous and elaborate lock to which there was no key.