Ahuitzotl. Herb AllengerЧитать онлайн книгу.
it?” Nezahualpilli replied in bitterness.
Tizoc gazed over the devastation in disbelief. Huge black billows of smoke from raging infernos clouded the afternoon sky, blocking out the sun and darkening the surrounding plain, and he heard the horrible and repeated distant screams of women and children arising from the conflagration. “He got his way after all,” he thought aloud, and then turned to his colleague and added, “We may as well investigate this and learn first hand what he has done.”
The three monarchs, along with their advisors and head clerics, on entering Toluca’s streets, were greeted by an appalling spectacle, the likes of which they had never witnessed before, with naked bodies of slain women, young and old, grotesquely twisted where they fell, and blood-soaked children wailing next to their dead mothers, and corpses of old men and priests strewn about smoldering wrecks of houses and temples—sights which stunned them into grim reticence. A massacre contrary to all standards of decency, it imparted as a horrific shock on them. Tears of rage and remorse flowed from a petrified Tizoc who viewed the ruin of this once proud city in abject horror, and he cursed himself over and over for not having been present to prevent it.
When they came to the main plaza, they met the first group of warriors escorting lines of captives from the vicinity—Tizoc could not look upon them. Then, at seeing the stacked bodies of the priests on the temple tiers and steps and the shattered fragments of the statue which had been hurled from its upper platform, their revulsion was heightened; the Mexica priests babbled nervously among themselves, exhibiting shocked expressions, especially when they saw the broken idol. A short distance from there, they noticed Ahuitzotl with Tlohtzin appearing to give out orders to a number of his chieftains standing about, and Tizoc, not disposed to dismiss this slaughter, headed straight for him, his vehemence mounting at every step. Ahuitzotl, who knew he faced condemnation, observed his approach in soberness.
“I see you’ve done your work well,” muttered Tizoc when he reached his commander; he was so enraged that he trembled as he spoke. “Are you satisfied now?”
Ahuitzotl, himself still aggravated and nerves on edge, was in no mood to receive further criticism but, for the moment, held back from answering.
“Is this how our warriors must demonstrate their bravery?” Tizoc stormed on. “Were we in such need of our exhibition that we had to inflict it upon defenseless women and children and enfeebled old men? This is what you led them to?”
“I’ll not endure this insult!” Ahuitzotl suddenly exploded. “I did not intent this, nor did I order it! I am as sickened as you over what happened here, so do not prod me, Lord, else I shall forget myself and commit my own act of brutality—against you!”
Tizoc recoiled, stunned over his commander’s open indiscretion, as was everyone else witnessing this outburst, including Nezahualpilli whose patience with Ahuitzotl was running out.
“You dare threaten the Revered Speaker?” he interjected in his apparent shock.
“Pardon my ill-chosen words,” Ahuitzotl backed off. “They were spoken in haste out of my disgust over this massacre. I will not be made the villain in this!”
“Then how do you account for it?” Tizoc pressed.
Ahuitzotl deeply resented this sort of interrogation coming from a man he regarded as his inferior, but he remembered his obligations and was not about to add another transgression above an already untenable breach of conduct. “We lost control,” he admitted, “and what you see here is the result. Our warriors were mad with rage, due to Zozoltin’s refusal to fight conventionally, and could not be constrained. By the time I could get order reinstated, it was too late. This is the truth—I swear it before Huitzilopochtli.”
An oath such as this was unquestioned and convinced Tizoc of Ahuitzotl’s sincerity, and although his anger abated, he remained horror-stricken over the wreckage around him.
“By all the gods in heaven!” he cried out. “How can we face our allied rulers and speak of honor after this? What a day this has been! How will I tell my people I forsook the battlefield in order to assure our victory? Who will believe it?”
“We have both done damage to ourselves it seems,” replied Ahuitzotl, “so let’s absolve ourselves of our misdeeds and draw no more attention to it, if that is acceptable to you.”
“Forget this?” Tizoc faltered.
“Yes, as I must forget your fleeing before Zozoltin.”
After a lengthy pause, Tizoc nodded his agreement, not because he felt he could dispel any repugnance over what he had witnessed—his nature would never permit this—but that he knew his was a far graver infraction than Ahuitzotl’s. He knew himself to be false, which bore heavily into his consciousness. Even how he rationalized his flight, as necessary for their triumph, was deceitful, for he fled out of fear, perpetrating an unspeakable act of cowardice which, had it been committed by a lower ranking noble or warrior, constituted an offense that demanded execution. Nezahualpilli was correct in saying this would forever be held against him.
The rest of the day was spent in mopping up operations which entailed taking the wounded to physicians, accumulating the dead, counting them, and burning them on pyres, and amassing weapons taken from the defeated. The captives, including most of the city’s residents and surviving warriors, among them Zozoltin, were gathered into a containment area guarded by sentries. A long debate ensued among the victors about the wisdom of leaving Toluca in desertion and in the end they decided that a majority of local citizens, along with a number of soldiers, should be released and permitted to rebuild their city with the help of their neighboring tribesmen. Even Ahuitzotl concurred with this, largely out of misgivings he felt over having been responsible for the cruelty inflicted on the city, and there were no objections by the warriors who ordinarily could have made claims on individual prisoners but were still shamed by their conduct and found it awkward to insist upon this right under the circumstances. Zozoltin, while grieved over the ruin of his city, nevertheless was able to give thanks to Tizoc for what he deemed an act of atonement for the Mexica’s excessively ruthless vengeance. When all was done, the Mexica had counted three thousand captives, several of whom were women who had either chosen to remain with their taken husbands or were selected as desireable for slaves or sacrificial victims.
So ended the first day of the month Ochpaniztli. In the passing of a single afternoon, the Mexica exacted their punishment and in the process the lives of the principals who had taken part in the drama were decidedly altered. For Zozoltin and his followers, it forged a climactic finish to what they had dreaded the most—the inevitable outcome of challenging a superior power in an attempt at sovereignty against almost all hope. For Tizoc, already unpopular, it added one more stain on his effectiveness as a ruler and appeared to portend a beginning, rather than an end, to greater difficulties. For Nezahualpilli, it festered lingering doubts and supicions towards men he once regarded as true friends and whom he thought he had understood. As for Ahuitzotl, it exposed how fragile his control over his forces was in its reality, how easily it could be lost, and, more importantly, the dangers of injecting his own solutions into events decreed by greater powers. The vision of the priest had been fulfilled, but not at all as expected, and worse, Ahuitzotl could not capitalize on it, as he might have wanted to, because of his own misdeeds. For all of them, it had been a most memorable day.
XIV
Toluca had been a costly enterprise for the Mexica, with nearly five thousand casualties that included fifteen hundred dead; it was predictable that the reception accorded the returning armies in their respective cities would be subdued, if not at first, when the details of the battle unfolded. Still, custom called for a runner to be sent to Tenochtitlan with his hair neatly braided who would race through its streets waving his maquauhuitl and shield joyously bespeaking of their triumph. Shortly after he set out, the rest of the force began its two day march back with the prisoners and wounded, an uneventful journey.
When the armies of Tenochtitlan and Acolhuacan entered the capital, the populace had been prepared by Cihuacoatl to greet them. Incense burners were lit and shell trumpets sounded, reeds and flowers were spread on the main avenue over which the soldiers trod,