War God (69 page)

Pepillo lodged his small feet in the huge iron stirrups and found that by pushing down he could raise himself up in the saddle as Melchior had done for him when they galloped. Whispering encouraging, gentle words to the stallion, Melchior moved to the front of the enormous animal and began to lead him forward by the reins.

Looking down at Molinero’s great head, ears twitching, long chestnut mane flapping a little with each step, Pepillo felt a tremendous rush of excitement and pride. He was riding! The smell of the horse was in his nostrils and he thought there was no finer scent in all the world. He reached forward to pat the animal’s powerful neck and suddenly, offering no explanation, Melchior thrust the reins into his hands and stepped away.

‘What?’ asked Pepillo, as the horse continued to amble forward. ‘Why?’

Melchior grinned. ‘Stay on as long as you can,’ he said, and slapped Molinero on the rump.

Blood ran freely from a deep cut in Mibiercas’s face, he and La Serna were desperately holding off a mob of Indians who sought to capture and draw away a fallen man, and the rest of the small group of Spaniards were struggling to form a defensive circle when Davila’s full squad reached them at a run, rapidly absorbed them, reformed as a square and turned back towards Potonchan, which lay four miles to their north, concealed behind the range of low hills they had passed. The Indian attack did not cease but pressed on all the harder, hundreds – it seemed thousands – howling their monstrous war cries, vicious spears jabbing at exposed faces and legs, obsidian-edged swords slashing, while the pikemen fought mightily to thrust them back and the musketeers and crossbowmen at the centre of the square hurriedly reloaded.

Díaz was in the front rank, buckler defending the man next to him, broadsword arching down over the shield of the man to his right, his muscles aching with the strain of the unrelenting effort, sweat soaking his shirt and breeches beneath his armour as he hacked and stabbed at foes so close that the alien odour of their dusky bodies filled his nostrils. The square continued the fighting retreat towards Potonchan, but it was slowing with every pace, losing momentum like a carriage mired in thick mud, when all the muskets crashed again at point-blank range. Discouraged by this, or perhaps at some command from their captain, the Indians seemed to lose their taste for the close melee and broke away to a safer distance, where they began to put up a great din of drums, trumpets, whistles and shouts and at once resumed their barrage of slingstones, arrows and wicked fire-toughened darts, launched with great force from spear-throwers.

More of the enemy could be seen across the fields, flocking to reinforce the attackers, and it seemed to Díaz the worsening odds made it impossible for the Spaniards to fight their way back to Potonchan. There was a real danger they would all lose their lives here unless Cortés came out to relieve them – a prospect made improbable by the stunted hills that blocked the view and a strong breeze blowing steadily from the north carrying the sounds of battle away from the town. Because they were fully encircled, there was no question even of sending a fast runner to summon help, but a large, barn-like structure standing in the fields to their east at a distance of six or eight hundred paces seemed to offer some hope of respite. Although somewhat in ruins it was built of stone, its thatched roof was still largely intact and it looked defensible, so it was with a renewed sense of hope that Díaz heard Davila shout the order and the whole square wheeled ponderously and charged towards it under the unceasing and implacable hail of missiles.

The next ten minutes – it could not have been much longer – passed like an hour for Díaz, the agony of his injured leg slowing him, his breath heaving in short hot gasps as the square fought a running battle against the massed foe, forcing every footstep through the rough impeding growth of the young maize. Three times, large companies of Indians swung in towards them, making concerted efforts to close and stop their flight, but Davila had the shooters working in continuous relays, five musketeers and five crossbowmen along each flank now, moving in and out to fire and reload, fire and reload, so although the attacks hindered their progress, they could not stop them, and at last, all winded, two score at least bleeding from flesh wounds, they reached the shelter of the building. A few dozen Indians had already occupied it, but the Spaniards ignored their spears and arrows, crashed in on them and slaughtered them in a frenzy of pike and sword thrusts.

It was a large, bare rectangular structure they’d taken possession of, twenty paces in length and ten wide with an earthen floor and transverse rafters supporting the thatched roof at about twice the height of a man. The walls were of stone, badly broken on the north and south sides, offering good cover for the shooters but unfortunately dilapidated enough to allow sufficiently determined attackers, should they choose to come on in overwhelming numbers, to break through. There were also many window slits, the remnants of ten each amongst the rubble on the north and south sides, five more to the east side and a wide, unprotected gap where a door had once stood on the west side.

All in all, a good, naturally defensible position. It would have served, Díaz thought, as an excellent fortress when it was intact, and still offered the Spaniards a refuge that they might hope to hold for many hours at little cost to themselves and great cost to the enemy. Davila had already ordered musketeers and crossbowmen to take up positions at every breech in the masonry, through which it could be seen that all around, just out of range, the Indians had drawn to a halt. Díaz found Mibiercas and they joined Davila at the doorway while Le Serna with two musketeers and crossbowmen and a few others climbed up into the rafters, cut through the thatch and forced their way onto the roof.

Reinforcements had been joining the foe all morning. ‘How many do you see?’ Davila called up.

‘Counting,’ La Serna shouted back. They heard him moving around over the thatch.

‘Still counting,’ he said a moment later.

‘How many?’ Davila insisted.

‘Two thousand,’ said La Serna finally, ‘and you know what? Absent a miracle, we’re all dead men.’

Even as he spoke the drums of the enemy, which had fallen silent, began beating again, their trumpets and whistles blew in a violent cacophony and the front ranks surged forward with blood-curdling screams.

Davila ordered a volley fired, ten muskets, ten crossbows, and the men began to reload feverishly as the second volley crashed out.

Potonchan was seven miles north of Cintla and fast messengers, who could run that distance in less than an hour, had been scurrying back and forth all morning to keep Muluc and Ah Kinchil fully informed. For some perverse reason of his own, Muluc seemed to want Malinal to witness the humiliation of the white men, whom he insisted on calling ‘your precious so-called gods’, so he kept her in attendance in the main audience chamber of the palace.

She knew as a result that no all-out attack had yet been ordered. During the night, ten thousand warriors had been camped in an arc less than a mile south of Potonchan, but around dawn Ah Kinchil had drawn them back to Cintla, leaving only a few thousand skirmishers in place to harry the white men should they attempt to push along the
sacbe
towards the regional capital.

Malinal couldn’t help thinking, with so dangerous an enemy as these ‘Spaniards’, that she herself might have suggested a different strategy – for example, massive, overwhelming force right from the start. But Muluc, for all his bravado, was cautious, even cowardly, and Ah Kinchil was old, indecisive and deeply afraid of the white men, whom he still in his heart believed might be gods, despite the advice Cit Bolon Tun had given him.

So their decision was to wait and see what the Spaniards would do.

What they did was surprising and contradictory.

On the one hand they had released prisoners, captured during the battle for Potonchan, and sent them to Cintla in the night with a message of peace for Ah Kinchil, to whom it appeared they wished to offer immortal life.

On the other hand, an hour after dawn, a tight, disciplined unit of the white men, a hundred strong, had marched out of Potonchan along the
sacbe
obviously spoiling for a fight. They had been engaged by skirmishers about four miles south of the town – just three miles north of Cintla itself! – where the Xaman hills concealed them from the Spaniards’ main force.

‘Do these hundred have the weapons called “guns” that make a great noise and kill men at a distance?’ Ah Kinchil had asked the messenger. The answer was yes, but not, it seemed, the terrifying big guns on wheeled carriages deployed the day before. Even so, the white men had defended themselves well with their smaller guns and their long metal knives. The skirmishers, for their part, had kept their nerve and called in reinforcements. When the messenger had left the scene, the hundred Spaniards had been fought to a standstill and were completely surrounded in open fields by two thousand Mayan warriors.

Muluc and Ah Kinchil argued for a long time about what they should do next. Ah Kinchil was convinced it was a trap. These hundred must be bait intended to provoke him into committing his main force, which the Spaniards would then destroy. But Muluc reminded him of Cit Bolon Tun’s information. The army of the Spaniards did not exceed five hundred men, of whom not many more than four hundred would be available for combat today
and they had no reserves to call on
. So if a hundred of them had failed to overcome two thousand skirmishers, it stood to reason,
regardless of whatever desperate trap they might hope to spring
, that four hundred – even five hundred! – must fall like the ripe maize at harvest if Ah Kinchil would only throw his forty thousand warriors against them, now, in one massive blow.

Malinal had to admit she could find no fault in Muluc’s reasoning and was not surprised, in the face of his insistent bullying, when the paramount chief eventually gave way. Being too old to go into battle, Ah Kinchil seemed almost grateful to pass command to the younger man and agreed to travel with the rearguard as an observer only.

Before he hurried from the audience chamber to lead the army of the Chontal Maya north in a great mass towards the fields of Potonchan, Muluc turned on Malinal. ‘Remember that Mexica trader I told you about,’ he said, ‘the one I’m going to sell you to?’ He smirked as he saw her face drop. ‘Well, you’re about to meet him.’

Malinal thought she had never seen her stepfather look so pleased with himself.

Having returned to the passage they’d cut through the bush, Alvarado led his men onto the track he’d followed in yesterday’s flanking manoeuvre. It continued through forest for about another mile, and then a further mile through open fields to a point about three miles south of Potonchan, near a range of low hills, where it intersected with the great highway that Davila’s squad were reconnoitring today. He had it in mind to cross the highway and head west towards the coast and the manglar swamps to see if there was any sign of the enemy there but, soon after emerging into open fields again, with the long white strip of the highway in sight, he began to hear musket shots. The sounds were coming from somewhere further to the south, beyond the hills, and reached him faintly at first because of an adverse north wind. Still, there was no doubt in his mind. That smug bastard Davila, who’d rescued him yesterday, had run into trouble with the Indians.

Alvarado ordered his squad to turn south across the fields. Proceeding through the maize at a forced march, and skirting the hills, he soon had a better idea of Davila’s predicament. Half a mile ahead, somewhat to the east of the road, stood a large building completely surrounded by a great horde of the enemy. The crash of musket fire was unmistakable now, so too the mad discord of drums and pipes with which the Maya liked to accompany every attack, and snatches of wild yells reached him between gusts of wind.

‘Keep low, men,’ Alvarado ordered. ‘Let’s see how close we can get without being seen.’

It was uncomfortable bending over almost double, carrying weapons and running through the maize, but well worth the effort. The enemy, and there were thousands of them, had their backs turned and were so intent on the waves of assaults they continued to throw against the well-defended building that they remained for a long while perfectly oblivious of the squad’s fast, stealthy advance.

Alvarado raised his arm and brought his men to a halt less than five hundred paces from the outer ranks of the enemy encirclement. A small force of Spaniards still held the roof of the beleaguered building, shooting down on the attackers at point-blank range, pushing them back with pike thrusts, and seemingly as unaware as the Indians themselves of Alvarado’s approach.

Keeping his voice low, he called his twenty musketeers and twenty crossbowmen forward and ordered them to spread out into a single skirmish line with the rest of the square formed up behind them. ‘Pick your targets,’ he said, ‘and at a hundred paces, sooner if they spot us, put a volley into their backs, all the muskets and all the crossbows together, then countermarch at the double back into the square and draw your swords.’

‘What about reloading, sir?’ one of the shooters asked.

‘We’re going to cut our way through and join Davila’s men. You can reload at your leisure once we’re inside that barn they’re defending.’

Alvarado drew his rapier and slashed its blade satisfyingly through the air. He rather wished he’d brought the falchion after all. This Nuñez steel was too good for riffraff like the Maya.

The Indians were getting better at timing their charges in the intervals between musket and crossbow volleys, Díaz realised. He was defending a gap in the masonry on the south side and this was now the sixth or seventh wave of attackers who had hurled themselves furiously against weak points all around the structure and repeatedly tried to scale the walls whence they were thrown back by the shooters and pikemen on the roof. Again came the hideous shrieks and yells of the attackers; again strong hands scrabbled at the crumbling blocks, tearing down the wall stone by stone; again snarling painted faces loomed up through the breach, their rank breath reaching Díaz. He gave a hard thrust with his sword, saw it smash a man’s front teeth in a burst of blood, felt it slip through the void of his mouth and catch as it severed his spine. Another suicidal warrior was already climbing over the back of the first, offering his face to the blade, and Díaz withdrew and stabbed again.