This is the last of four extracts from my novel War God: Nights of the Witch that I am offering free-to-read here on Reality Sandwich to mark the publication of War God in the US. If you have a Kindle (or the free Kindle app on your PC, Mac, I-Phone, I-Pad, Blackberry, Android, etc) you can download the complete novel from Amazon.com now for just $2.99. The paperback edition is available for pre-order now and will be released on 31 July. For War God in the US click here: http://amzn.to/15sPWRj. For War God in the UK, click here; http://goo.gl/VDyKK. For War God in Canada, click here: http://goo.gl/HmXq0. The free Kindle app is available here: http://goo.gl/AOm5q
Chapter Fourteen of War God introduces the conquistador, Hernando Cortés when he comes to the rescue of another key character in the novel, Pepillo, a page boy who serves Gaspar Munoz, the expedition’s sadistic Dominican Inquisitor. Following immediately is Chapter Fifty-Seven of War God, and here we meet again the young Aztec witch Tozi, who we met in extract one, and the warrior Guatemoc who was severely injured in a knife fight in extract three. Using her powers of invisibility Tozi enters Guatemoc’s room and appears to him in the guise of Temaz, the goddess of healing.
Chapter Fourteen
With tremendous gratitude and relief, Pepillo discovered that he had been released from the crushing grip on his nose. He rolled over and pushed himself onto his knees, head down, coughing and gurgling, clearing a torrent of blood and phlegm from his windpipe. Over the sounds he was making, he heard Muñoz speaking through clenched teeth: ‘Where I choose to discipline my page is not your business sir.’
‘Hmmm. Perhaps you’re right. But you’re a man of God, Father – a man – and this boy is little more than a child, and does not the Good Book say that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to ones such as these?’
Pepillo was breathing freely again. Some blood was still running from his nose, but not enough to choke on. He scrambled to his feet and saw his rescuer mounted on a big chestnut stallion, towering over Muñoz and himself.
‘”Withhold not correction from the child”,’ Muñoz suddenly thundered. ‘”Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.”‘
The man on the horse nodded his head. ‘Proverbs 23,’ he said, ‘verses 13 and 14 . . . But I still prefer the words of Christ our Saviour: “Whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea . . . ” Matthew 18:6, if I remember correctly.’
‘You dare to tell me my scriptures!’ Muñoz snapped.
‘The word of God is for all, Father.’
By now Pepillo very much liked the man on the horse, not only for saving him from a painful beating, or because he had the nerve to quote the Bible at Muñoz, but also because he looked splendid and warlike and must surely be a great lord. He wore long leather boots, a fine Toledo broadsword strapped over his rich purple doublet, a black velvet cloak with knots and buttons of gold, and a large gold medallion suspended from a thick gold chain around his neck. On his head, tilted at a jaunty angle, was a broad-brimmed leather hat with a plume of feathers. Perhaps thirty-five years old, but radiating an air of worldly experience that made him seem far older, he was deeply tanned with a long oval face, a generous forehead and black hair cropped short, military style. A beard followed the firm edge of his jaw and covered his chin; a long moustache decorated his upper lip. Disconcertingly, his eyes were different sizes, shapes and colours – the left being large, round and grey, the right being smaller, oval, and so dark it was almost black.
‘The word of God is indeed for all,’ said Muñoz gruffly, ‘but most do not merit it and fewer truly understand it.’ He signalled Pepillo. ‘Pick up the bags, boy. We still have a long way to go.’
Pepillo jumped to obey but the horseman said, ‘Hold!’ and raised his gauntleted right hand. He turned to Muñoz. ‘I see you wear the habit of the Dominicans, Father. But the monastery is that way – ‘ he pointed to the town – ‘back the way you came. There’s nothing but ships up ahead.’
Muñoz sighed. ‘I am here to take passage on one of those ships. I am appointed Inquisitor of the expedition of Diego Velázquez, which is soon to set sail to the New Lands.’
‘By which you must mean the expedition of Hernando Cortés.’
‘No. It is the expedition of Diego de Velázquez, governor of this island . . . He it was who conceived of it, financed it, supplied the ships. Cortés is merely its captain. A hired hand.’
The man on the horse gave Muñoz a cold smile. ‘You will find,’ he said, ‘that I am much more than a hired hand.’ He took off his hat, swept it down in a salute: ‘Hernando Cortés at your service. Velázquez sent me word to expect you. I’ve set aside a cabin for you on my flagship.’
‘Then you must have known all along who I am!’ An angry grimace crossed Muñoz’s face as the implications dawned.
‘You’ve been playing me for a fool, sir.’
‘I’ve been learning about you, Father . . .’
‘And what have you learned?’
‘That you are Velázquez’s man. It’s something I will think on.’
‘Aren’t we all Velázquez’s men?’
‘We’re all the king’s men and his loyal subjects, Father.’ Cortés looked down at Pepillo and winked, his mismatched eyes giving him an oddly quirky and cheerful look. ‘Pass me those bags,’ he said. He indicated hooks hanging from both sides of his saddle.
Pepillo swung towards Muñoz, seeking permission, but the Dominican said loudly, ‘No!’ There was an edge of something like panic in his voice.
‘Nonsense!’ said Cortés as he spurred his horse round Muñoz, kicking up a cloud of dust and stooping down low to snatch the two bags and secure them to his saddle. ‘My manservant Melchior will have these waiting for your page to collect when you come on board,’ he told the friar. He touched the spurs to his horse’s sides again and galloped towards the pier where, in the distance, the Santa María de la Concepción was still loading.
‘But . . . but . . . but . . .’ Pepillo opened and closed his mouth, feeling shocked, not sure what to expect next.
Muñoz turned towards him with a terrible blank stare.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Guatemoc’s estate, Chapultepec, small hours of the morning, Thursday 25 March 1519
The moon, waning but still close to full, cast its light through the open window of Guatemoc’s bedchamber where the prince lay on his back, his eyes open, staring up at the ceiling. Though his recovery had been remarkable (his doctors described it as a miracle), his wounds still pained him deeply and he was wide awake, thoughtful, his mind restless.
Everything that had happened since Shikotenka had expertly ripped him apart on that hillside in Tlascala all those weeks ago had been extraordinary, wondrous and inexplicable.
He had met Hummingbird, the god of war, and been told that it was not his time to die.
And he had met Temaz, the goddess of healing, who had brought him back to life.
Impossible to believe these two divine encounters were not connected!
‘A great battle lies before your nation,’ Hummingbird had told him, ‘but the weakling Moctezuma is not competent to fight it.’
While for her part the Lady Temaz had urged him to defeat the plot against him and find the one who was truly responsible for it.
Well, he knew the answer to that now!
It had been Moctezuma himself who had sought to poison him. Mecatl had merely been a puppet in the royal hands.
Of course his uncle had responded with feigned outrage when Mecatl revealed the truth under torture. He’d ordered the fat physician flayed alive and presented his skin to Guatemoc – as though that could possibly make any difference.
No one dared challenge the Great Speaker, but the truth was the truth and it could not be divided. The only question now was what was to be done about it.
As Guatemoc lay on his bed, silent and still, for the first time in his life seriously contemplating rebellion, a voice spoke to him out of the darkness.
‘How fare you now, Prince?’ the voice asked. The voice of a goddess.
‘Better than I could have hoped,’ Guatemoc replied, not allowing the sudden excitement he felt to reveal itself in his tone. ‘Perhaps better than I deserve.’
The moonlight traced a bright path across the floor and in the midst of it there came some disturbance of the night, some ripple and sway of the empty air. A small, slim form emerged from nothingness, a hand reached out to touch him and he felt once again the mysterious radiance of divine power.
There was a moment of communion, almost of bliss. So this was what it meant to be caressed by a goddess!
Guatemoc attempted to raise himself on one elbow, but soothing warmth was pouring into his body in a great flood and he groaned and lay back.
‘Rest, Prince,’ said Temaz. ‘Do not struggle. I bring you the gift of healing. You must only accept it.’
For a long while he felt her working on him, first removing his bandages, then delicately probing and touching with her fingers, all the while sending this incredible glow, this splendour, this tingling, revivifying heat into his wounds.
She did not speak but sang softly under her breath, half a whisper, half a chant, as she continued these gentle ministrations and, little by little, trusting her utterly, he fell asleep.
When he awoke, hours had passed, the moon was set, grey dawn was breaking and the Lady Temaz was gone.
***
Leaving Guatemoc asleep, Tozi had returned to the safe house in Tacuba and now lay stretched out on a reed mat on the floor as the lakeside town awoke noisily to the new day.
She had gone to the prince intent on talking to him about many things, and most of all about Quetzalcoatl, though she had promised Huicton she would not. But when she had seen Guatemoc in the moonlight, seen how wounded and vulnerable he still was despite his remarkable recovery from poison and from his dreadful injuries, she had known she must help him first before any talking was done.
And she’d known she could help him. The healing spell had come to her unbidden, from some hidden depth of her heritage, and she had sung it for him in the moonlight all the night long.
It was strange. Hated Mexica prince though he was, scion of a cruel and murderous family, a killer and a sacrificer himself, she nonetheless found she was strongly, indeed almost irresistibly, drawn to Guatemoc. She realised now that the attraction had begun the moment she’d first set eyes on him weeks before when he lay gaunt and wasted in the royal hospital, on the edge of death. She’d wanted to cut his throat but had ended up saving his life.
There was good in him, that was why!
She must have known it, she must have seen it, even then.
And since there was good in him, she resolved, it was her job to nurture it and turn it to the cause of Quetzalcoatl.
A thought crossed her mind as she drifted off to sleep. This attraction she felt for the prince, with his handsome, hawk-like face and his beautiful copper skin so warm under her hands? It wasn’t, was it, that foolish attraction a woman sometimes feels for a man?
‘Gods forbid!’ Tozi muttered, her eyes fluttering closed. She had no time for such nonsense.
***
The two chapters above were the last of four extracts from my novel War God: Nights of the Witch that I have offered free-to-read here on Reality Sandwich to mark the publication of War God in the US. If you have a Kindle (or the free Kindle app on your PC, Mac, I-Phone, I-Pad, Blackberry, Android, etc) you can download the complete novel from Amazon.com now for just $2.99. The paperback edition is available for pre-order now and will be released on 31 July. For War God in the US click here: http://amzn.to/15sPWRj. For War God in the UK, click here; http://goo.gl/VDyKK. For War God in Canada, click here: http://goo.gl/HmXq0. The free Kindle app is available here: http://goo.gl/AOm5q
Image by Keoni Cabral, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.
