King of The World's Edge Page 9

  We grew thin and muscular, never really hungry or satisfied, and at long last arrived at a river, immensely broad, and were supplied (at a fort, of course) with sufficient craft to take us to our journey’s end, and were told that our forest marches were behind us.

  Our paths had been made easy for us, and we moved through this almost trackless wilderness as a post-rider might confidently ride the highways of Rome, sure of a change of horses as needed or a place to lay his head or a relief to take and carry on his message.

  We white men learned to respect the manner in which the country was managed, especially when we saw the large number of coracles that rocked in the shallow cove on the morning of our embarkation.

  “Ohion,” Hayonwatha named this river. “Yonder, upstream, several days journey—lies the City of the Snake and Kukulcan.”

  We splashed through the tinkling ice fringe and pushed out into the deep water. Vigilant scouts shot ahead, and more slowly we commenced the final step of our long journey.

  At times we saw creatures drinking unalarmed: wolves, bear, large wild cattle with humped backs, shaggy hair and short sharp horns.

  Again we saw giant elk, broad-antlered, or the maneless lion who preys upon these creatures, long tail switching as he snarled at us glaring his hate before bounding into the forest.

  We now observed among these far stretches of timber, maple, oak, birch, beech and pine, leafage mostly seared by frost, some few yet violently scarlet, and were offered at our resting-places nuts of kinds that were strange, yet very sweet and good, with dessert to follow of the smoky-tasting wild grapes which abound everywhere.

  A rich land, my Emperor, running over with riches for its owners!

  At last the forests fell away, for we had left the frontiers behind us. Clearings showed along the river-banks, each with its mounds, its forts, its tilled lands, and many, many servile people who eyed our white skins with dull, stupid curiosity, until the whips cracked over their own scarred backs.

  Then, with hardly a glint of rebellion in their black eyes, they took up their burdens, building more mounds or making higher those already built.

  Clearings broadened into meadows and moorland, forts became enclosed towns or cities defended by citadels, all without any stonework, done in heaped earth walls crowned by palisades, yet quite impregnable against any force that existed to menace them.

  One day we left this Ohion, and entered a tributary stream. Not long after, we arrived at the chief, though not the largest, city of Tlapallan. It was the impressive and bloodstained City of the Snake.

  In progressing up the nobler river we had observed smoke pillars rising ahead of us, their columns broken into long and short puffs, and were told by our friends that word was going on ahead that we were coming, from village to village.

  Along the lesser tributary, we noticed that the centers of population were undefended by fortified enclosures, and concluded that we had arrived at a point where danger from barbarians was improbable. Now we decided that we were wrong, for we saw a long mound wall stretching along a narrow ridge at the junction of a small river with that which we were following alongshore.

  As we first caught sight of it, we were struck with its resemblance to a serpent, the image being greater than any serpent that ever crawled, for it extended fully a quarter-mile. If the far-flung loops of its undulations, which formed fort-like enclosures, had been straightened, it would have been much longer.

  The body itself is thirty feet across, though only the height of a tall man above the ground level. In its enclosures, all the people, in the unprotected communities up and down the little rivers, could find shelter in case of invasion. The tail was near one stream, its head near another, and upon its back were built log houses, connected by palisades, in order to form a continuous wall at all points not less than twenty feet high. At the three gates were fortified outworks, almost impregnable.

  As we marched along the outside of this imposing fortress, we saw every available spot, upon roof or palisade, filled with people. They watched us, but there was no word of welcome, nor did they follow along the wall, but remained where they were until we were out of sight. This chill greeting seemed ominous.

  The feeling was not lessened when, at Hayonwatha’s command, the Tlapallicos took up a position to the right and left of each of us. In a column of threes we approached the gateway at the Serpent’s jaws. These were widely spread, and beyond the outworks we could see another mound, oval in shape, crowned with a roof or pavilion of logs, and noticed that another pair of jaws at its opposite end opened to surround this oval completely, though the head of the other snake was bodiless—as the river, which flowed nearby, interfered with any extension of the earthworks.

  Not knowing whether we were prisoners or honored guests, we fifty Romans approached the gates, wide flung and waiting. One hundred feet from the entrance, our long column halted. The company trumpeter sounded his shell trumpet, and with measured stride a procession came forward to meet us.

  Company upon company of fighting-men, they met us and split to left and right, impassively taking their places. We were surrounded!

  That foreboding of mine grew stronger, and I quietly passed the word down my line to be ready for trouble. I heard behind me the snick of steel in sheath, the thrum of bows being strung taut, the rattle of arrows, and felt easier.

  We might be doomed, but we would die bravely, I thought.

  Slaves bore a litter through the gate, and we saw reclining upon it a grossly obese man, middle-aged and cruel of countenance.

  Physically he was a giant, for when standing he was nearly eight feet in height, and at one time he had been the champion of his race. The solid copper antlers upon his head made him look much taller, though creeping age and vices had blurred the originally fine lines of the face and body. As a scepter, he carried a finely worked spear, the copper head of which weighed more than a woodcutter’s ax.

  His robe, we were later told, was woven of human hair!

  Spear butts thudded in salute. Hayonwatha murmured, “Kukulcan!” All the red men bowed low in servile salutation.

  Then Hayonwatha touched Myrdhinn’s arm and led him forward to the litter, where he sank to his knees and bowed his forehead to the ground. Myrdhinn proudly stepped back, and the monarch’s face purpled.

  Instantly, slaves leaped upon Myrdhinn, tore the robes off him and hurled him to the ground. I turned to my men, felt a tremendous blow, and, reeling, saw my comrades falling from blows from left and right, heard the armed men rushing, closing in, leaping upon us!

  With that picture before my eyes, the war-cries of friend and foe ringing loud, I felt the warm blood running down my back beneath my armor and the grit of dirt in my mouth. This is Death! I thought. In my mind I cursed the false friend who had pretended to be my blood brother in order to trap us more completely. I knew myself trodden upon, but felt no pain from kick or blow, just a sensation of earth opened beneath me, and myself falling into the abyss.

  11 The Snake—and the Egg

  The next I remember, I lay in utter darkness. Beneath me was a puddle of cold water. I tried to roll out of it and heard groans. I was conscious enough to know that the groans were my own, and then I must have swooned again, for without any apparent interval of time it was light and I could see. But it was not the light of day, nor the good sweet air of upper earth.

  Like moles we lay, I and my men. They huddled dispiritedly by themselves while other groups of prisoners, copper-colored folk, kept also to themselves, though casting curious glances at us. Stark naked, all of us, shivering with cold in the dank air, winter close at hand. I wondered as I lay there if this was the mode of execution we were to expect.

  Distant noises, and my aching eyes focused properly upon a glare of torches, which shone through a grille of stout oak bars laid transversely across the entrance to this large underground chamber. Then, as these bars were removed, an officer an
d two guardsmen came in with torches, lighting up the place more clearly.

  The officer passed among us with disdain. One could see that he regarded us as a farmer might his sheep. Without fear, he made the circuit of the walls, looking for evidences of digging.

  Satisfied that no tunnels were under construction, he returned to the entrance, snapped orders, and slaves entered with steaming buckets, which they emptied into long troughs and retired.

  The bars slid into place, the locking pins drove home and we were left in our den. Sickened by the sounds of feeding swine, where men fought and gobbled at the troughs, I rolled on my face in the water and hoped for death.

  A kindly hand stroked my head and a.kind voice said, “My poor friend!”

  I rolled over again. It was Myrdhinn. Gaunt and bony, clothed only in his beard, he still retained his dignity.

  “Rouse and eat. Gather strength and courage. This is not our end!”

  Then I first saw who stood by him: Hayonwatha, who had led us into this trap—my blood-brother!

  “Traitor! Judas!” I croaked, and tried to raise myself to strike him down, but was too weak to throw off Myrdhinn’s restraining hand.

  “Eat!” he repeated. “Our friend is prisoner and condemned to death with us. We will ‘explain while you regain strength. Trust him as true man, for his future is tied with ours.”

  And so, trusting Myrdhinn at least, I ate thick stew of corn and beans from the cupped hands of Hayonwatha, whom I wished to kill, and reclined on my elbow, listening, feeling the good food bring back life, and my aching head throb less mightily.

  I learned that law among these barbarians was rigidly followed, its transgressors punished by death, its ironbound code unchangeable in the slightest degree. This code ordering that prisoners should be brought in bound, naked and unarmed, had been wantonly broken by our coming—free, clothed and armed!

  Hayonwatha, who had conceived that because we had gained his friendship we should be treated as friends, had been bitterly astonished to see the treatment meted out to Myrdhinn.

  Myrdhinn had brought it upon himself by his refusal to demean himself before one whom he considered an inferior, but whom these people considered a deity incarnate, lord of sea, sky and earth.

  By giving us kind treatment, Hayonwatha had for-feited his precarious citizenship (being of the second generation), and with him all his men, because they ‘had not risen to strip him of his office and ask for a new commander. This word had gone ahead of us by smoke pillars, and unknowing we had marched toward a planned doom, though Hayonwatha had suspected that trouble was coming when the garrison of the fort had been replaced. His orders had been to bring us in as prisoners, and for that reason his men had formed to seize us without injury, without knowing they were to be prisoned with us.

  Here in the pit, for three days, while I had lain unconscious, my men and Hayonwatha’s had been at odds, but the fight was about worked out of both factions and apathy had set in, for there was little hope for escape and a grisly end in view for all of us.

  “So you see, Ventidius,” said Myrdhinn, “that he really did more for us than we had any right to expect, and his own friendliness has brought him misery such as ours.”

  I tried a smile. It hurt. I took Hayonwatha’s hand. “When I am more recovered we will see what we can do.”

  “We are friends, then?”

  “Friends,” I echoed. “Myrdhinn, order it to be so.” He stalked off, and through half-shut eyes I saw the groups intermingle. At least, I thought, if there is any escape, let us fight as one people. Then I became very sick and, I believe, delirious; not so much out of mind, however, that I could not tell that the light from very high, small openings was waning, or so much that I did not know when the food was brought again.

  I heard Myrdhinn say, “Another gone.” I roused from my torpor to see a Tlapallico dragged away by burly guards.

  Out he went, fighting grimly, protesting while a good seven-score men stood by and watched him go without offering resistance. The bars sealed us in again, the light waned, and it became almost completely dark in our miry pit.

  Then far, far away, heard dimly through the many feet of earth above us, a roar of cheering fell and rose, and fell again; and with it came night and deeper cold and things which slithered and crawled over our shrinking bodies as we slept.

  Such, repeated again and again, was to be a typical day of our life for many days to come.

  “Here,” remarked Hayonwatha, “is the river up which we came; here, Nachan the City of the Snake; and here is the Snake herself, Ciacoatl, the Devourer, the Earth-Mother, defender of the city by means of her own earthy body, being rampart and object of worship also.”

  We three leaders were squatted around a dry spot. Hayonwatha drew his finger along the dirt floor as he spoke.

  “Such a monster should have a suitable mate,” I said.

  He looked up. “She has. About fifty miles away is her mate, situated properly to close off a bend of another river, in similar manner to Ciacoatl. They lie looking at each other across the land. His name is Mixcoatl, the Storm-Serpent, god of the water and the rain. A large city, Colhuacan, City of the Twisting Mound, is protected by his body. About ten miles up this river lies Miapan, the greatest citadel in all of Tlapallan, for in it sixty thousand people, with provisions and chattels, may find shelter in case of siege, while down the river is a fortified town, Tlacopan, shielding the people of the lower valley.

  “These three strong places are the main strongholds of the Mias.

  “Now, to the northeast, lies a great inland sea of fresh water, where are the hunting-grounds of my mother’s people. It is not many days’ journey and if we could reach them, along this road where the miners travel from these four cities to the copper mines near the inland sea, I am convinced that we would be welcome.

  “Through the uncounted moons these Mias have held the land of Tlapallan, they have driven back the

  Onondagaono, persecuted them, raided them for slaves and loot, but my people are still free and could they control thek own fierceness and unite with their neighbors they might meet and drive back any invasion.“

  “Who are these neighbors?” I queried.

  “Once there was one people, fierce, terrible fighters, independent and brave. They lived in this country before they were driven out by the superior strength of the trained and disciplined Mias. Moving north, they became hunters and fishermen, living wild in the woods in small communities. The struggle for life was hard and, losing touch with one another, various persons came to blows over the hunting, or women, and so factions were created. As time went on, these factions became separate nations who now agree on scarcely anything and are as ready to take one another’s scalps as they are to take those of the real enemy, the Mias.”

  “How many nations do you reckon them?” asked Myrdhinn.

  Hayonwatha checked them on his fingers.

  “There are five powerful nations of the woods. Fkst, the Onondagaono, my own people, strongest and bravest of all, then the Gwengwehono, the Nunda-waono, the Ganeagaono and the Onayotekaono.”*

  *These correspond with the Indian nations we know as the Onondaga, the Cayuga, the Seneca, the Mohawk and the Oneida.

  “Would they unite, think you?”

  Hayonwatha chuckled grimly, his nearest approach to a laugh.

  “Certainly—in death! Nothing else will* unite them. Not even Tarenyawagon, the Master of Life, could do that!”

  “Tarenyawagon? It is he whom you worship?”

  But Hayonwatha, so loquacious on some subjects, was suddenly struck dumb, and brooding, he moved away and sat by himself, while we (understanding that we had unintentionally pried into a mystery) remained where we were and discussed the future.

  From what he had told us, we knew that should we be able to escape we would be exchanging qne dreadful fate for another, unless by our own prowess we might
make ourselves so feared that we would be let alone in the forests where we must lead the lives of outlaws.

  Among all these Chichamecan tribes, these five nations appeared to be the most intelligent, having kept their independence during their wild life without sacrificing everything else to the hunt for food, although their code of warfare, we were told, was no better than the very wildest of the painted prisoners we had seen in the many forts we had visited on our long journey.

  The Mias fought to secure slaves. All their enemies fought for captives to torture, having no need of slaves in their system of living. The practices of the forest nations seemed to us bitter and unnecessarily cruel.

  Each war-party that set out tried to do the very utmost of injury to its enemy. Women and little children were butchered, and because of this fact these five nations, especially, were headed for mutual extermination.

  Yet, as Hayonwatha explained the code, we could see that it was not without a rude sense. Each woman might fight or be a mother of fighters—ergo, each child might grow to be a fighter or a woman! They were Mlled, as warriors, for the killing of them was a powerful blow to the enemy. It helped to weaken his power and it struck, theoretically, terror to his heart.

  But to us, it seemed that this element of terror was overrated, for the killing of a man’s wife or child must naturally drive him ever after his search for revenge. So the Chichamecans made themselves weaker and an easier prey to the slavers of Tlapallaa.

  Still, could we escape, our best haven was north, beyond the frontier, among Hayonwatha’s people, where more than anywhere in Alata we might reasonably hope to make friends.

  We had learned that our deep prison lay under the

  Egg, held between the jaws of the Snake. Could we dig out, which was impossible owing to the rigid daily inspection, we would come out among the buildings of the city or upon the level plain outside the rampart. In either event, we would be discovered, for so large a body of men could not escape the notice of the sentries.