There was another rustling in the brush, and Cozcatl joined us, saying quietly but proudly, "My master has taken his first war prisoner, all unaided."
"And I do not want him to die," I said, still panting—from excitement, not exertion. "He is bleeding badly."
"Perhaps the stumps could be tied off," the man suggested, in the heavily accented Náhuatl of Texcala.
Cozcatl quickly unbound the leather thongs of his sandals and I tied one tightly around each of my prisoner's legs, just below the knee. The bleeding dwindled to an oozing. I stood up between the trees and looked and listened, as the knight had done. I was somewhat surprised at what I heard—which was not much. The uproar of battle to the south had diminished to no more than a hubbub like that of a crowded marketplace, a babble interspersed with shouted commands. Obviously, during my little skirmish, the main battle had been concluded.
I said to the glum warrior, meaning it for condolence, "You are not the only captive, my beloved son. It appears that your whole army has been defeated." He only grunted. "Now I will take you to have your wounds tended. I think I can carry you."
"Yes, I weigh less now," he said sardonically.
I bent down with my back to him and took his shortened legs under my arms. He looped his arms around my neck, and his blazoned shield covered my chest as if it had been my own. Cozcatl had already brought my mantle and spear; now he collected my wicker shield and my blood-stained maquahuitl. Tucking those things under his arms, he picked up an amputated foot in either hand and followed me as I moved off through the rain. I trudged toward the murmurous noise to the south, where the fighting had finally wound down, and where I supposed our army would be disentangling the resultant confusion. Halfway there, I met the members of my own company, as Blood Glutton was collecting them from their various overnight stations to march them back to the main body of the army.
"Fogbound!" shouted the cuáchic. "How dared you desert your post? Where have you—?" Then his roaring stopped, but his mouth stayed open, and his eyes opened almost as wide. "May I be damned to Mictlan! Look what my most treasured student has brought! I must inform the commander Xococ!" And he dashed away.
My fellow soldiers regarded me and my trophy with awe and envy. One of them said, "I will help you carry him, Fogbound."
"No!" I gasped, the only breath I could spare. No one else would claim a share of the credit for my exploit.
And so I—bearing the sullen Jaguar Knight, trailed by the jubilant Cozcatl, escorted by Xococ and Blood Glutton proudly striding on either side of me—finally came to the main body of both armies, at the place where the battle had ended. A tall pole bore the flag of surrender which the Texcalteca had raised: a square of wide gold mesh, like a gilded piece of fishnet.
The scene was not of celebration or even tranquil enjoyment of victory. Most of those warriors of both sides who had not been wounded, or were only trivially wounded, lay about in postures of extreme exhaustion. Others, both Acolhua and Texcalteca, were not lying still but writhing and contorting, as they variously screamed or moaned a ragged chorus of "Yya, yyaha, yya ayya ouíya," while the physicians moved among them with their medicines and ointments, and the priests with their mumbles. A few ablebodied men were assisting the doctors, while others went about collecting scattered weapons, dead bodies, and detached parts of bodies: hands, arms, legs, even heads. It would have been difficult for a stranger to tell which of the men in that wasteland of carnage were the victors and which the vanquished. Over all hung the commingled smell of blood, sweat, body dirt, urine, and feces.
Weaving as I walked, I peered about, looking for someone in authority to whom I might deliver my captive. But the word had got there before me. I was suddenly confronted by the chief of all the chiefs. Nezahualpili himself. He was garbed as a Uey-Tlatoani should be—in cloak—but under that he wore the feathered and quilted armor of an Eagle Knight, and it was spattered with blood spots. He had not just stood aloof in command, but had joined in the fighting himself. Xococ and Blood Glutton respectfully dropped several steps behind me as Nezahualpili greeted me with a raised hand.
I eased my captive down to the ground, made a tired gesture of presentation, and said, with the last of my breath, "My lord, this—this is my—well-beloved son."
"And this," the knight said with irony, nodding up at me, "this is my revered father. Mixpantzinco, Lord Speaker.
"Well done, young Mixtli," said the commander. "Ximopanolti, Jaguar Knight Tlaui-Colotl."
"I greet you, old enemy," said my prisoner to my lord. "This is the first time we have met outside the frenzy of battle."
"And the last time, it appears," said the Uey-Tlatoani, kneeling down companionably beside him. "A pity. I shall miss you. Those were some wondrous duels we had, you and I. Indeed, I looked forward to the one that would not be inconclusively ended by the intervention of our underlings." He sighed. "It is sometimes as saddening to lose a worthy foe as to lose a good friend."
I listened to that exchange in some amazement. It had not earlier occurred to me to notice the device worked in feathers on my prisoner's shield: Tlaui-Colotl. The name, Armed Scorpion, meant nothing to me, but obviously it was famous in the world of professional soldiers. Tlaui-Colotl was one of those knights of whom I have spoken: a man whose renown was such that it devolved upon the man who finally bested him.
Armed Scorpion said to Nezahualpili: "I slew four of your knights, old enemy, to fight free of your cursed ambush. Two Eagles, a Jaguar, and an Arrow. But if I had known what my tonáli had in store"—he threw me a look of amused disdain—"I would have let one of them take me."
"You will fight other knights before you die," the Revered Speaker told him, consolingly. "I will see to that. Now let us ease your injuries." He turned and shouted to a doctor working on a man nearby.
"Only a moment, my lord," said the doctor. He was bent over an Acolhuatl warrior whose nose had been sliced off, but fortunately recovered, though somewhat mashed and muddy from having been much trodden upon. The surgeon was sewing it back onto the hole in the soldier's face, using a maguey thorn for a needle and one of his own long hairs for a thread. The replacement looked more hideous than the hole. Then the doctor hastily slathered the nose with a paste of salted honey, and came scurrying to my prisoner.
"Undo those thongs on his legs," he said to a soldier assistant, and to another, "Scoop out from the fire yonder a basin of the hottest coals." Armed Scorpion's stumps began slowly to bleed again, then to spurt, and they were gushing by the time the assistant came bearing a wide, shallow bowl of white-hot embers, over which small flames flickered.
"My lord physician," Cozcatl said helpfully, "here are his feet."
The doctor grunted in exasperation. "Take them away. Feet cannot be stuck back on like blobs of noses." To the wounded man he said, "One at a time or both at once?"
"As you will," Armed Scorpion said indifferently. He had never once cried out or whimpered with pain, and he did not then, as the doctor took one of his stumps in each hand and plunged both their raw ends into the dish of glowing coals. Cozcatl turned and fled the sight. The blood sizzled and made a pink cloud of stinking steam. The flesh crackled and made a blue smoke that was less offensive. Armed Scorpion regarded the process as calmly as did the physician, who lifted the now charred and blackened leg ends out of the coals. The searing had sealed off the slashed vessels, and no more blood flowed. The doctor liberally applied to the stumps a healing salve: beeswax mixed with the yolks of birds' eggs, the juice of alder bark and of the barbasco root. Then he stood up and reported, "The man is in no danger of dying, my lord, but it will be some days before he recovers from the weakness of having lost so much blood."