The gods had rewarded us, and we rewarded them. To gain the blood that was needed to appease the gods, our warriors needed constant warfare. Because that cannot be done with our neighbors, we hired our warriors out as mercenaries.
The Mexica name had become feared as it should. We did not retreat in battle. We would pursue an enemy until they dropped. When our warriors marched beyond the reach of our supplies, they marched prisoners with them and ate them to sustain their strength.
I, too, had learned lessons from the past. When an ambitious prince of Azapotzalco, Maxtla, rose to king by murdering his brother and other contenders, he aggravated other tribes by murdering their leaders and demanding more tribute. I instructed our Revered Speaker that we would need allies to go to war against the powerful empire.
With Texcoco and Tlacopan as our allies, we made war upon the Azapotzalco.
Maxtla believed he was a great warrior and maker of war, but he had never fought the Mexica way. After he discovered the power of our army, he sued for peace. My Revered Speaker held a feast to discuss the ending of the war. During the course of the meal, Maxtla asked what meat it was that he was eating.
"Ambassador stew," my Revered Speaker told him. "We are eating the man you sent with your overture of peace."
The peace negotiations were a failure.
The Azapotzalco were defeated. Maxtla fled the battle even while his warriors were fighting. At the sight of him running, they threw down their weapons and fled. My Mexica warriors found Maxtla hiding in a temazcalli, a mud hut used for steam baths.
They piled wood around the hut and baked him inside.
When the war was over, we Mexicas were the most powerful tribe in the One World. We were still in the spring of our bloom, but the rewards of empire were soon pouring into Tenochtitlan.
We had never been numerous people, and we lost many young men in war. We would never be able to control a great empire with a large army as all others before us had done. Instead, we spread out, conquered, and controlled with a reign of terror.
We defeated enemy armies, terrified their people, and then withdrew, leaving behind an administrator with a small force of warriors. The duty of the administrator was little more than collecting the annual tribute we assessed for the region. The local people were free to follow whatever lifestyle they wished—as long as the tribute was paid. When it was not, or our administrator was harmed or disobeyed, our army quickly subdued the rebellious people and punished them harshly.
Tenochtitlan became the greatest city in the One World. Not only did our armies march, but our merchants became travelers who brought back to the city the finest luxuries to be found in one corner of the One World to the other. If our merchants were harassed or murdered, the retribution was swift and harsh. When women of another city insulted our merchants by lifting their skirts and displaying their naked buttocks, we killed the inhabitants and razed the city.
Ayya, we had fulfilled our destiny. But our strategy was so successful, we found few enemies to fight. As the war god of my people, I knew that did not bode well for them. We needed a constant supply of war prisoners to sacrifice so we could continue to fulfill the covenant that had brought us food and prosperity.
I found a solution in the Flower Wars. These were friendly wars fought with our own allies. Their finest warriors would meet our finest in battle. Little effort was made to kill. Instead, the goal was to capture warriors so they could be sacrificed and then honored by having their captors cook and eat their remains.
But not even the Flower Wars were always able to satisfy our need for blood. We suffered a burning drought in which the rain god refused to water our crops, and the sun god blazed down until the crops shriveled and died. When the Revered Speaker came to meditate for guidance at my temple, I told him he must pour a river of blood to appease the gods. The gods had given us an empire, and they wanted their reward.
War had to be waged against even friends to obtain the necessary prisoners, but that year over twenty thousand sacrifices were made. An almost endless line of prisoners went all the way out to the causeways that led across the lake. The priests atop the temple who cut the still-beating hearts out and threw them into Chac-Mool's bowl were soaked in blood from head to foot. A river of blood ran down the temple steps.
The whole Mexica nation feasted on the flesh of the defeated warriors.
The gods were pleased. The rains came and the sun shined.
All was well with the Mexica people. It had taken us nearly twenty generations, but we had risen to hegemony over the One World.
But there was always one god who could never be satisfied. Quetzalcóatl, the Plumed Serpent, would not be satisfied with just blood. When he left Tula and sailed over the Eastern Sea, he had declared that he would be returning to claim his kingdom.
Although my people enjoyed the opulence of the masters of the One World, they always knew that someday Quetzalcóatl would return.
And the kingdom he would claim was the one they possessed.
FORTY-NINE
We left Teotihuacan, left the dream, and I returned to being a servant boy to a traveling magician. The time I had been with the Healer turned into a year and then into another. After my experience with the potion of the flower weaver, I continued to learn the way of the indios, the dialects, the nuances of walk and talk and even thinking. The day came when the Healer paid me the compliment I had long waited for.
"You no longer smell like a white man," he said.
Besides knowledge of my indio ancestors' history, I gained respect for them. Aztec history was a bloody one, but besides war, the indios made astronomical discoveries, perfected a calendar, published innumerable books in the picture writing that resembled the hieroglyphics of the Egypt of the pharaohs, and made amazing discoveries in health and medicine. Tenochtitlan was said to be a clean, fresh-smelling city in which waste was hauled away in boats to be used as fertilizer. The floating gardens that took root and created man-made islands and temples larger than any on earth were marvels of engineering.
It was true that there were aspects of the Aztecs that were not to be admired. Their practice of the blood covenant was cruel and barbaric. But it was not any more brutal than the practices of the largest and most respected European empire in history: the Roman Empire. Not even the great Aztec sacrificial ceremony where twenty thousand people were killed overshadows the savageness and cruelty of the Roman arenas. The arenas were not just places where thousands of gladiators fought to the death, but many thousands of innocent Christians and other dissenters were murdered by professional warriors or torn apart by wild animals—all for the amusement of crowds.
The Aztecs were no more hated by the indio states they demanded tribute from than the Romans were hated by the peoples they had subjugated. The fray told me that the Romans crucified ten thousand Jews at one time after they rebelled against Roman tyranny and payment of tribute to Rome. Whole cities were decimated.
Even in my own enlightened time, how many thousands were sacrificed because of some unspoken blood covenant the Inquisition had with God? Is being burned alive at the stake less barbaric than having a knife plunged into your chest and your heart ripped out?
Ayya, I would not be the first to cast a stone at my Aztec ancestors.
There was more to the story of the Aztecs, the return of Quetzalcóatl, and the attack by gods astride great animals, but that must wait for another time. But there was one custom of my indio ancestors that I found more repugnant than ripping out beating hearts. Aztec priests often slit their pene so that they could not have relations with women. And if they did have relations despite the cut, their virile juice spilled onto the ground. And many of their warriors cut off a piece of the skin at the front of their pene and offered the skin in sacrifice.