RAFT OF CONQUISTADORS

RAFT OF CONQUISTADORS, by Raphael Ordonez

 

Zisz the god-diatom skimmed the pelagic zone of space. The crystal vessel, both shell and ship, that housed Zisz’s tender self described a zigzag path across the abyss until it fell at last by chance into a spinning star-whorl. Planet-fields flung from white-hot sparks as from potters’ wheels collapsed into blue embers ere Zisz passed the innermost clusters. Time meant nothing to Zisz. Lost dwarf moon, divine radiolarian, Zisz spun on, spines aquiver in stellar currents, baroque exoskeleton glinting for no eye to see.

Aeons slipped by, raindrops in the ocean. A yellow sun hung with nine jewels winked against the void. The sapphire among them, third dewdrop from the fire-flower, sang the siren song of Life, self-replicating, self-modifying, self-sustaining, basking in a warm golden glow. Zisz’s search was over.

Zisz dove down, a hyperbolic approach that endured centuries of that planet’s cycles. Gazing down at last on its blue oceans and green continents, Zisz realized Zisz’s error: though formed chiefly of quu, the stuff of crystal and stone, the planet had birthed Life made, not of quu, but of ubl. Once down that well, Zisz might never emerge. Zisz tried to pull away, but too late.

Spines white-hot and melting, Zisz fell from the sky, coursing over hazy clouds and green forests and sluggish brown rivers. By stages the wind stripped Zisz’s shell away, raining it upon the earth in screaming teardrop bombs. Sea-green swept toward Zisz from the east. Resigning Ziszself to Zisz’s fate, Zisz crashed in the shallows, setting up waves that washed far shores.

Probing the world with subtle antennae in the days that followed, Zisz nevertheless found cause to rejoice. Though on a minute scale, diatomaceous Life making use of quu did dwell in the water. It would take ages, but Zisz could gather this Life and with it build a means to reascend to the stars. In the meantime, Zisz would cultivate the sea-people Zisz had discovered, an ancient, degenerate race dwelling in black basalt cities of the deep. They would worship Zisz after their fashion, and Zisz would shape them, orient them to a new end.

Ages passed. The world changed. Ice sheets advanced and receded. Reefs grew up around Zisz. River-mouths deposited their annual loads of silt and sand. The reefs became long islands, a broken barrier between the sea and the land. Zisz’s once-spherically symmetric shell accepted the imposition of mundane architecture.

The sea-people proved unsatisfactory for Zisz’s ultimate purposes, being soft of flesh and physically uniform. But a new people, rude at first beside their predecessors, came upon the earth, maturing by fits and starts. Forging links between quu and ubl, Zisz collected representatives from among the tribes of these hairy bipeds, consuming their minds and inhabiting their bodies, day by day nearing the accomplishment of the divine task for which Zisz had been cast on the deep.

The lonely, infantile proto-god authors of Zisz’s existence had expelled Zisz in a cloud of like spores all on the same mission. Alone of these copies, Zisz had survived the collapse of that cosmic bubble, omnicognizant and unthinking, to continue Zisz’s course through the fast-expanding new universe, incapable of guessing that the divine energies had ceased to cohere in an earlier cycle.

#

“A corpse is no more a man than a side of beef is a cow,” growled the mulatto Francisco Carvajal from the side of the raft. His shaggy red beard and long black locks made him the very image of the shipwrecked sailor. “Eat Ribiera, I say. No doubt our good Don Pedro will do the gutting and carving, if you’re all too squeamish.”

The Aztec prince Tezozomoctli, called Pedro by the Hispanians during his exile, stiffened, setting his coppery hand on the hilt of his obsidian-edged macahuitl. “We of Meshico-Tenochtitlan are lords of the earth, and feast on the flesh of our vanquished foes. We do not settle upon corpses out of hunger, like caracaras or coyotes.”

Carvajal shrugged and continued looking out to sea.

“Have you forgotten that we have no fire, señor?” demanded Don Pánfilo de Narváez, the leader of the doomed expedition, of which only that raft of eight persons remained. His face was yellow, spotty, and wrinkled, and he was missing one eye. He occupied the raft’s only chair, sitting in the shade of a tattered awning, as belonged to his rank and years. “Do you propose dining on raw flesh?”

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Carvajal muttered.

The don’s watery blue eye glared. “You forget yourself,” he growled. “When I desire the advice of half-breed felons, you may be sure that I shall ask for it.”

“In any event, ecclesiastical law forbids it,” observed Padre Diego Xuárez, picking fastidiously at his tattered black soutane. A young man with large, liquid eyes and delicate hands, he struck an incongruous note among the grizzled adventurers.

“The natives of the south are allowed to eat capybara on Fridays, I’m told,” retorted Carvajal.

“They have a dispensation,” said the priest.

“I know nothing of your laws,” said Odisi, an albino prince of Benin, a slave whom circumstances had elevated, if not to equality with Don Pánfilo, then at least to the rank of the other officers. Though stamped with the features of his race, his skin was a ghostly white, his curly hair a deep gold. “What I know is that we shall die if we do not eat. One horse and one mule yet remain to us, and drink more water than we can afford.”

Don Pánfilo de Narváez brought his fist down on his knee, white mustaches bristling. “For the last time, I forbid it!” he roared. “I am a caballero of the crown. I come here as conquistador at my king’s command.” (He always spoke of his king, as though he had a special king that was just his and not the others’.) “Would you have me go on foot, like a beggar or a thief?”

“Let us eat the mule, at least,” said Odisi.

“If the natives refuse our entreaties and contemn the cross, I shall ride to war, astride a horse. If they welcome us and accept baptism at the hands of our good padre here, I shall enter their villages meekly, on an ass. Both animals are needed. Let that be an end of the matter.”

“A mule is no ass,” muttered Carvajal.

“Except in your case,” said Montero. His mate Corbelan laughed. The only sailors remaining from the abandonment of the ships, they were both bastards, but prided themselves on the (relatively) pure blood that flowed in their veins. Only Carvajal heard the jibe. He scowled but said nothing.

Here Inés de Aguirre, who had hitherto refrained from giving an opinion, leaned toward Don Pánfilo. The young widow of an officer slain at the outset of their misfortunes, she had risen in the ranks as a soldier herself, bearing her husband’s arms and armor, and giving Don Pánfilo counsel that swayed him when the words of other men only made him more obstinate. Her long red hair blew freely in the wind of the gulf as she whispered in his ear.

He nodded, listened, nodded again. “Very well,” he said gruffly. “Forgive me, Padre Xuárez, but the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Señores Corbelan, Montero, and Carvajal” – he paused impressively – “prepare our departed companion.”

Carvajal spat into the water and went aft. His companions groaned as they began stropping their knives on their boots.

#

The raft tossed on the glassy green waves of the gulf, drifting through hectares of golden sargassum where crabs with patterned shells went back and forth among the bladders and leaves, doomed by the current to wash ashore and be devoured by sea birds. Though her crew of conquistadors knew it not, the raft, too, was borne westward to a zone of the coast which gathered to itself all the flotsam in that part of the gulf. The patchwork sail hung almost limp in the sultry breeze, doing little to move the rough-planed logs joined by iron and ropes.

Looking out to sea as he nibbled the last bits of meat from a glistening ulna – the conquistadors had retreated each to his own corner to consume the guilty repast – Carvajal cursed the day he’d signed onto the ill-fated expedition, beset even before it reached Cuba with disasters like hurricanes and shipwrecks. Then again, a man fleeing for his life under the cloud of such crimes as he was accused of had few choices.

“O Holy Mother of God,” he murmured, “when I joined this company to escape my perfidious enemies in the land of flowers and crocodiles, I besought you to grant me three chests of gold as a consolation for my sufferings. Only three!

“And when the folly of Don Pánfilo de Narváez brought us to grief in the town of Apalachen, far from the sea, I told you that I would accept two chests, provided we escape with our lives. And we did escape, though leaving many a friend to grow cold in the swamps and mires of our retreat, and only to find that our ships had forsaken us in the meantime.

“O Dolorous Mother, I ask you now only for one chest. Yes! For one large chest of gold only do I plead. In lieu of the one I give up, I ask that I might make it safely to land and so back to Borinquén. Hear my prayer, O Blessed – ”

A strong white hand settled on his shoulder. He started, embarrassed to be discovered in his orisons. He turned to face the iron-thewed prince of Benin, who, careless of his dignity, still associated with the hands. Odisi appeared not to have noticed his preoccupation.

“Well, Odisi,” he said, tossing the bone overboard, “will we go to the devil for what we’ve done today?”

“It is not good to eat a man. The orishas are displeased with us.”

Carvajal snorted skeptically. “If you thought so, you should have fasted.”

The prince looked down at him. “I did. The one who stands in the ase of Olodumare can transcend his own weakness. You should know that. You told me once that your mother was half Yoruba and an iyalawo.”

“Yes,” said Carvajal impatiently. “She’s a priestess of Ifá, a curandera to the high-born of Borinquén, and a fiend.”

“Did she never teach you of the path to Olodumare?”

“Aye, and how to sell my soul to Satan. It’s all the same to me, my friend.”

“I am sorry to hear that,” a dispassionate voice said. They both turned. Padre Xuárez had come up behind them. His doll-like face remained primly impassive, his small, useless hands cupped one over the other, reminding Carvajal of the lace-festooned santo niño at the chapel where he was baptized. It was impossible to imagine the priest either smiling or frowning.

“One man’s orishas are another man’s devils,” growled Carvajal. “This is the New World, Padre, an ocean away from Salamanca. You’ll find that your old rules don’t apply here.”

“God is in all places, my son. Take care. My time in the confessional has taught me that the world of demons is real. I can always tell a person in the grips of an infestation. Their body gives off a bad smell, a fetor of corruption.”

Carvajal spat. “Are you saying I stink in the nostrils of the righteous, Padre? After two months on this raft, you don’t smell like roses yourself.”

“That may well be. And yet there is a difference, not of degree, but of kind.” The priest moved on to speak with Inés, his favorite among the band, going quickly past Tezozomoctli, whose cold, appraising stare made him profoundly uncomfortable.

“Is that true, Carvajal?” asked Odisi.

“What?”

“Can the priests of your god smell devils?”

“Dah! Don’t listen to him. He was half-mad before he left Hispania. He applied thumbscrews to one too many Moriscos.”

“It is a strange world you come from.”

“It’s not my world,” Carvajal said bitterly. “To each of you I am one of the others. The truth is that I am Borinqueño. I have no more to do with Hispania than you do. You have crossed the ocean, which is more than I can say.”

“Yes, and I must cross it a second time ere long. My father will be dead now, perhaps, his throne empty. I must slay my enemies and claim it.”

“Whatever induced you to leave, man?”

“I had heard of the great god of the white men, and set out to bring knowledge of him to my people. Through the perfidy of an attendant I was captured by slavers and borne to the Canarias, where the men of Pánfilo de Narváez bought me, and taught me that the only god of the white men is gold.”

“No,” said Carvajal. “Say rather that they have a sickness whose cure is gold. I suffer from the same disease.”

#

Night fell. The full moon rose. Silver glittered on the dark sea. Don Pánfilo slumbered in his chair. The other seven slept on the open deck, under the stars.

Giants’ drums troubled Carvajal’s dreams. The sense of menace mounted. He awoke with a start. Thunder still dinned in his ears. He got up on one elbow. The raft was tossing on breakers!

He leaped to his feet. White crests rolled away before him, spending themselves on a long, low strip of land. A gigantic tree deposited by a storm in the surf loomed up out of the darkness. The raft crashed against it, sending pelicans croaking into the night.

Now everyone but Don Pánfilo was awake. The horse and mule reared and went clattering back and forth across the logs. A big wave broke over the raft, which remained stuck on the tree. The supplies floated up and back to the deck.

“We’ll be swamped!” shouted Inés. “Montero! Corbelan! You, Carvajal! Push us off!”

The hands stumbled to the tree, but their muscles were nothing beside the strength of the sea. A second wave washed over the deck, foaming and hissing. The two panic-stricken animals crowded into one corner, lifting the opposite side out of the water. A third swell spun the raft around the trunk. But it remained off balance, with the horse and mule scrambling madly on the submerged half. Another second and the raft would turn completely over and drown all on board.

Carvajal, seeing the danger, splashed over to the horse and, with his falchion, pricked its hindquarters. With a scream the animal half-fell, half-leaped into the turbulent water. The mule he sent off in like manner. The deck came nearly level again.

It was at this point that Don Pánfilo, thrown backward from his chair, awoke. “Men!” he cried, his bony legs in the air. “Awake! Rise! A storm is upon us!”

Inés was still trying to explain the situation when the raft struck the sandy bottom. Carvajal leaped off and found the water only chest deep. “It’s all right,” he shouted. “Come and help me unload her, you dogs.” (This to Montero and Corbelan.) “Try to keep the powder dry. The rest of you, get ashore.”

#

Dawn found the bedraggled company gathered on the beach. The three hands had succeeded in dragging the raft to the heaps of dark red, rotting seaweed that marked the limit of high tide. She sat on the wet sand now, with the foamy surf still lapping against her. The supplies – mostly weapons and clothing – lay heaped higher up. The horse and mule stood tethered to an old log.

The beach receded from view to north and south, backed by soft white dunes clothed in sea-grass and morning glory. Ghost crabs with long black eyes ran through the dry sand at their feet, retreating one by one into their holes. Rose tinted the eastern horizon below slanting bars of gold. The gray tatters that obscured the sky overhead would soon dissolve.

“I claim all this land for the crown of Hispania,” Don Pánfilo was saying. He stood under a flag planted in the sand. “Providence has seen us through our many trials. I recognize this part of the coast from the time of my encounter with Hernán Cortés, when I lost my right eye. Veracruz is not far off. There we shall obtain passage to Cuba, and see what has become of our ships.”

“We are nowhere near Veracruz,” said Tezozomoctli.

“Eh? What’s that?”

“He’s right, Don Pánfilo,” ventured Montero. “It must be a thousand miles from here.”

“What? Nonsense. I know where I’m at, señor.”

“Four months ago you judged us a few days from the Río de las Palmas,” said Carvajal, “and we have yet to see its mouth.”

“We passed it while out at sea. It’s been days since we were swept away from the others.”

“We haven’t made much headway, though, Don Pánfilo,” said Corbelan.

“Don’t tell me my business, señor.” The don flashed his single eye around at the others. “It will be a simple matter to march as far as Veracruz. We are in need of comestibles, however, and none are likely to be had on the beach. So we shall go a little ways inland and then turn to the south, following the coast, and claiming the lands we pass for the crown.”

“Perhaps,” said Inés, “we should spy out the country first, and leave one or two men behind, in case we should need the raft again.”

Don Pánfilo nodded sententiously. “Señor Corbelan, you watch over all this until our return. Padre Diego, you may remain with him, as this expedition may prove dangerous. I will ride our horse; the mule will remain with the raft.”

Reluctantly, the party set out, staggering through soft sand between the two nearest dunes. Tezozomoctli led, followed by Inés and the mounted Don Pánfilo, and Montero behind them; Odisi and Carvajal brought up the rear.

“What do you think?” the giant albino whispered.

“This is an island, like the one where we left Cabeza de Vaca,” said Carvajal.

“Why did you not say so?”

“Inés de Aguirre knows it, too. Ask her why she said nothing. Like most women, she knows the quickest route to having her own way.”

“Most women, and most men, too,” said Odisi.

“Look at the possibilities, my friend. Suppose we stop obeying that old hen up there. What then? Someone must lead. The only other peninsulares include two peasants and a woman. Then we have you, a Yoruban, and Don Pedro, an Aztec.”

“And you, a half-breed.”

“And me, a half-breed. No one of us could secure the following of the rest. Better to humor him, and lead him by the nose when we can.”

Their way wound between slopes of sand clothed in flowering herb and vine. Jackrabbits bounded out of their path. Black-headed gulls hovered in the wet breeze, laughing ironically. Once, a long line a brown pelicans sailed by overhead.

The dunes gave way to wetlands and saltgrass meadows. The party passed pools of fresh water framed by bulrushes and cattails, where they gratefully filled their empty skins and let the horse drink. Ragged clouds drifted low over the treeless flats.

Tezozomoctli remained at the head of the company with the aloof, disdainful air of a guide leading a party of courtiers on a hunting expedition. Though shorter of stature than the others, his bearing bore witness to a sultanic pride accustomed to seeing enemies slaughtered like cattle upon the altars of Tenochtitlan and Cholula. His noble face, with its narrow eyes and finely arched nose, wore a haughty mien whenever he happened turn around, which was seldom.

The party hadn’t gone a mile before they came to the inner shore, a curving strip of gravel and broken shells. Pink spoonbills rose into the air at their approach and drifted toward mudflats to the south. Water lapped gently at the beach. The far shore looked to be several miles distant, a dark line dividing the blue-green lagoon from the hazy sky.

“A bay,” said Don Pánfilo. “Which way must we go? Odisi, wade out into the water, which I perceive to be shallow here, and tell us how the shore curves.”

Odisi strode obediently into the brine, sending up clouds of yellow mud beneath the surface.

“Is the water cool?” called Carvajal.

“It is warm like the bath of the gobernador of Cuba,” the Yoruban replied. He went out about fifty yards, at which point he still stood only waist deep.

“What do you see?” shouted Don Pánfilo.

Shielding his eyes from the blazing sky, Odisi peered first north, then south. He shook his head. “There is no shoreline in sight,” he called.

“Very well,” returned the don. “You may come back.”

“It is a very long bay,” said Carvajal. “I vote we go north.”

“No, south,” said Montero, winking.

“When I want your opinions, señores,” growled Don Pánfilo, “I shall ask for them. Señora, what do you advise?”

“We are on an island, Don Pánfilo. We should take the raft to pieces and bear it across.”

“You forget that we just ate our shipwright,” said Carvajal.

Don Pánfilo stroked his mustaches. “No,” he said. “No more delay. We are very near Veracruz, I’m sure of it. We’ll push out to sea again and follow the shore until we turn the island’s cape.”

“But, Don Pánfilo,” protested Inés, “we have no idea how long the island is!”

“Nonsense. No island could be much longer than it is wide. We’ll be on the mainland by evening. Where is that accursed Yoruban?”

They all turned, and saw that the giant albino had approached a different part of the shore. He was staring at something. The party followed his gaze. A little way to the north, an intelligent hand had arranged lines of seashells on the strand, dividing the beach into irregular quadrilaterals. One spear topped with a fish skull stood upright in each. Several canoes rested on the shore.

“Come,” called Odisi.

The others approached. A flock of seagulls took off from a mass of yellow flesh the color of fresh sargassum. Its texture reminded Carvajal of a giant squid he’d once seen beached, and of the sea hares that swarmed the warm bays of Borinquén in the spring. The smell was overpoweringly offensive.

“What do you think?” asked Inés. “Is the island inhabited, then?”

“Perhaps the people live on the mainland,” said Odisi, “and visit here only to make offerings.”

“That was no offering, if I am not mistaken,” said Carvajal, pointing to a place where two spears had been knocked awry and the lines of shells disturbed. A patch of blood stained the shingle. “Also, the people must have swum back to the mainland, as they neglected to take their canoes.”

“They are on the island,” said Tezozomoctli. “They have been watching us since we refilled our skins.”

“What?” cried Don Pánfilo. “Why did you not tell us?”

“I did not want them to know they had been seen. They have only been watching us, and seem to mean no harm, at least not yet.” He set his hand on the wooden grip of his macahuitl. “There is time enough to deal with them if that changes.”

“You mean you’re not on the side of your own people?” sneered Montero.

Light flashed in the Aztec’s eyes, but a strange smile played over his lips. “This may be difficult for you to understand, but the inhabitants of this island are no more my people than the men of Galia or Albion are yours. Less so, in fact, for your peoples worship the same gods and follow the same paths of life, while these islanders I regard as little more than beasts.”

“Come, come, Don Pedro,” said Don Pánfilo patronizingly, not comprehending most of what Tezozomoctli had said. “Savages may distinguish among themselves, but to the civilized man they are all alike.”

The expedition would have ended in bloodshed then and there, had not Inés de Aguirre raised her voice and said: “We honor your place in our party, Don Pedro, and entrust ourselves to your guidance. Lead us back to the raft, if you will.”

Without another word, the Aztec turned on his heel and set out from the beach, his hand still on his sword.

“That was almost the end,” whispered Odisi as he came up behind Carvajal.

“It’s not over yet,” said Carvajal.

He proved foresighted when, midway to the beach, a native rose up from the long grasses through which the party was making its way, seeming to materialize out of nowhere. He wore a necklace of cowrie shells. Thin bones pierced his nipples and nose.

Montero started violently, then swept out his falchion and drove the blade into the man’s vitals. The native sank to his knees in a gout of blood.

Without a word, Tezozomoctli drew his macahuitl and brought it down on the Hispanian’s shoulder. The razor-sharp obsidian blades cut through flesh and bone, halting only when they reached the middle of his breast. With one deep and terrible groan, Montero fell forward upon his victim in a cascade of gore.

Tezozomoctli, leaving his sword in Montero, held his hands up, rotating slowly to face all directions. “Be perfectly still, all of you,” he said lowly. “We are surrounded. We stand within a hair’s breadth of death. That native was unarmed.”

The wind rustled through grasses. No one spoke. Slowly, the Aztec lowered his arms. “You all saw it,” he said. “It was Montero’s life or ours.”

“I saw no one,” said Odisi. “Montero did not deserve to die like that. The warrior appeared beside him without warning. Any of us would have reacted as he did.”

“I would not have,” retorted Tezozomoctli, “and, if any of you had – Don Pánfilo excepted, of course – I would have dealt with him the same way.”

“I wonder,” said Odisi.

“What is that smell?” asked Inés.

Carvajal bent down over the corpses. “The indio is slathered in some kind of grease.” He wrinkled his nose. “Perhaps it keeps the mosquitoes off.”

“And everything else, too,” said Odisi. “Small wonder he waited downwind of us.”

“It is the same as what we smelled at the canoes,” said Tezozomoctli.

“Let us go on,” said Don Pánfilo. “But, Don Pedro, next time, please await our pleasure.”

The Aztec drew out his macahuitl, wiped it on the grass, and returned to the head of the party. They set out again, leaving Montero where he lay.

More trouble awaited them on the beach. The Aztec froze as he stepped out from the dunes. The others bunched up behind him. “Madre de Dios,” gasped Don Pánfilo, who, from his horse, had the best view.

Corbelan lay face-down beyond the seaweed. Red stained the wet sand around him. The top of his skull had been cut neatly away. Yellow clots clung to his forehead. The crown itself, which lay at hand with its hair still intact, had been slathered with the same slime. There was no sign of Padre Diego.

“What do you say of your friends now, Don Pedro?” Don Pánfilo demanded. “They’ve scalped Señor Corbelan, and are no doubt preparing to feast on our unfortunate priest!”

Tezozomoctli ignored him. He was examining something on the hot white sand.

Carvajal strode over to the corpse and squatted to get a closer look. “He wasn’t scalped,” he said.

“What do you mean?” asked Inés.

“When the indios of Apalachen scalp a man, they cut along the hairline and rip the flesh off the top of the skull. Whoever did this removed the entire skull like the lid of a jar and ransacked the insides, leaving the crown behind.”

“You mean – ”

Carvajal nodded. “They took his brains.”

Inés turned away, nauseated.

Tezozomoctli rose to his feet, rubbing his fingers together. He opened them, stretching a thread of mucus from forefinger to thumb. “It was not the islanders who did this,” he said, as through replying to Don Pánfilo at last.

“Nonsense,” growled the don.

“You know something, Tezozomoctli,” said Odisi.

“Does it really matter now?” asked the Aztec. “Look at the signs. Whoever did this took the priest alive. They’re headed south along the beach, with perhaps an hour’s head start. We may be able to catch them up. If they had wanted to head out to sea they would have done so at once.”

“Do you mean they might have stolen our raft?” asked Carvajal. “Or are you suggesting – ”

“I am suggesting that we load the mule and start now, or we’ll never see the priest again.”

“What about Señor Corbelan?” asked Don Pánfilo.

“Leave him to the crabs and the seagulls,” said Carvajal.

#

The sun had just set behind the dunes, cool and pink. Its effulgence still filled the air. A warm breeze lingered. The vagabond conquistadors sat around a fire built from a pile of driftwood. Odisi was toasting a few bits of javelina meat in glowing embers swept to one side of the pit. They had marched many miles to the south of their raft, but they might as well have stood still for all that the view had changed.

The Aztec rose and went to the edge of the surf, looking out over the murmuring breakers. Carvajal came up beside him. “You know more than you have told us,” he said.

“Is that a question, or an accusation?”

“A question, if you will.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, I know more than I have told you.” His lip curled. “I do not wish to shake the faith of my companions.”

“I have none to shake,” said Carvajal, fingering his fishbone rosary.

The Aztec shrugged. “When I was a boy, I went on a war party that penetrated the land called the Mayab, which the men of Hispania call the Yucatán. It is the realm of the Chontal. They are an ancient people, but their cities, once proud, crumble now into ruins beneath the jungle that has devoured them.

“Our party was attacked and all slain. I alone, because of my age, was taken prisoner and made a slave. For a year I lived among them. I learned their tongue. Their priests divide the story of the world into cycles, saying that we live in the cycle of men. In a previous cycle, all the earth was one vast steaming jungle inhabited by great serpents. Another race held sway then, a people of the sea.

“Their empire foundered when a flaming mountain fell from the sky out yonder.” He pointed into the gulf, or across it, toward the Mayab. “The sun turned red like blood, and death stalked the earth, and the people of the sea retreated into the deeps. There they dwell still, though the scepter has passed to man. Degenerate, they dwell in ruinous cities of basalt built by their mighty ancestors.”

“Priests’ lies,” growled Carvajal.

“Perhaps. But there is a city near your Veracruz where the people speak a strange tongue that they do not teach to outsiders, preferring to learn the languages of their friends and foes. Their caciques are held to have strange alliances. Inquisitive visitors vanish without a trace.

“Once I quartered there with a force too large to make away with secretly. My secretary disappeared during the night, and in his apartment I found slime such as marked the sand this morning, and such as the Chontal priests told me the sea-people always leave behind.

“Also, the sea-people are said to hold a profound aversion to the smell of their own innards. It may be that the natives here have discovered this for themselves.”

Carvajal grunted. On a desolate shore it was easier to give credence to such tales than he liked to admit. The beach was almost dark now, and the stars peered evilly down on them. “Well,” he growled, louder than he’d intended, “I’ve yet to meet man or beast that could resist the edge of a sword.”

“It is not likely that you shall have the chance to test that,” said Tezozomoctli. “Corbelan did not.”

“You think us marching to our doom?” Carvajal demanded. The Aztec did not reply. “Why go on with us, then? The priest is no friend of yours.”

“He is of my war party, Moreno. The caballeros of Hispania are not the only ones with honor.”

“More’s the pity,” yawned Carvajal. He strolled back to the campfire, cast himself down on a pallet of dry seaweed, scratched himself a bit, and fell by stages into a deep sleep.

#

A scream split the night silence. He opened his eyes. The fire had burned to embers in the pit. Odisi, who lay stretched out opposite, had also been roused. He got up on one elbow and stared into the darkness.

A second scream, this time from farther away to the south, ended on a wild note. Carvajal leaped to his feet, took up a smoldering stick, and strode a few paces forward.

Inés came up behind him. “What is it?” she whispered.

“A scream in the night.” He glanced back toward the fire. “Where is Don Pedro?”

“It was his turn to watch,” said Odisi.

The screaming recommenced, turning gradually into mad laughter that receded into the distance. Carvajal set out at a run down the beach, brand in one hand and sword in the other, followed by the Yoruban. Once, he seemed to glimpse strange horned forms with indistinct bodies. But when he came to the place they were gone.

The Aztec’s macahuitl lay in the sand. Carvajal stooped to pick it up, for such blades fetched a high price in Borinquén. Odisi came up beside him. “That smell,” he said.

“The people of the sea,” said Carvajal.

They returned to the others. It seemed best to wait until morning before going on. If their enemy had been able to subdue Tezozomoctli, it would have little difficulty picking them off one by one in the dark. So they sat down around the fire and built it up anew. No one slept.

They set out under the gray of dawn. Near where Carvajal had found the macahuitl, they came upon a mass of yellow flesh. Carvajal picked it up, sniffed at it with distaste, and pushed it in between two bundles on the mule’s back. They went on.

The sun rose above the seaward haze into a cloudless blue sky. The beach went on and on without change. Twice they detoured through the saltgrass meadows, for Don Pánfilo remained convinced that they were on the mainland. Each time they saw the long lagoon and returned to the beach. Carvajal noticed that the natives still followed them, but said nothing of it to the others.

The sun was high in the sky when they came to a stretch of beach paved with tiny seashells of many colors. The animals’ hoofs clinked with each step.

“Don Pánfilo,” said Inés, “perhaps it would be best to dismount until we reach sand again.”

“Nonsense, señora, he said. “I’ve ridden through worse terrain than this.”

A moment later, his horse lost its footing and crashed onto its side. It rolled back to its feet without hurt, but left its rider on the shells. Inés leaped to the don’s side. His yellow face was gray with pain and mortification. He had a broken shin.

Carvajal and Odisi looked southward along the beach, pretending confer about their route. Both knew the injury to be a death sentence.

The old man cursed. “It is no use, señora. I can go no further now. Damn the beast!”

“We’ll make camp here,” said Inés.

“No. You must rescue Padre Diego and Don Pedro. Help me over to the dunes and leave the supplies with me. They can’t be much farther on. Go to their aid, and come back for me afterward.”

“No,” she said. “I won’t leave you here!”

He touched her face. “You are a brave and noble woman,” he said. “The pure blood of El Cid flows in your veins. But it is the part of a good soldier to obey what orders are given him. This is my command to you: take charge of the expedition, such as it is, and rescue our friends. Return to me if you can. I am not ready to die yet.”

Inés made no further protest, though she wept silently while she splinted his leg. Carvajal and Odisi readied a makeshift shelter, gathered driftwood, and built a small fire. They left him there with an arquebus in his hands. The animals were more difficult to dispose of. In the end, they bore a log to a pool some way inland and tethered the beasts within reach of the water.

The party went on. Neither of the men objected to taking a woman’s orders. Both knew that Inés had been the real leader of the expedition for some time. The little shells turned to big shells – lightning whelks, moon shells, and cowries – and then big shells gave way to sand again, unbroken sand stretching away as far as the eye could see.

“Madre de Dios,” growled Carvajal. “Does this island go on forever?”

It did indeed appear to have no end. Mile after weary mile they trudged, seeming hardly to move. In the afternoon, though, a shape emerged from the hazy distance. At first it seemed a small, steep hill in the middle of the island. But its contour was too jagged for that, with points of sky gleaming through interstices. Clouds of what appeared to be smoke wreathed its crown.

“What is it?” Inés wondered.

Odisi shaded his eyes. “I see shattered wood. It is a great wreck of a ship.”

“It’s too big to be a ship,” said Carvajal. “And how could it have gotten so far up on the island?”

“I expect the water washes right over this strip of sand during the hurricane,” said Odisi.

“Those clouds,” said Inés. “They’re…flocks of birds!”

“Looks like smoke to me,” said Carvajal. “Then again, my eyes are no good.”

“She is right,” Odisi said. “And that…hill…is made of great splintered logs and planks.”

“Like a giant bird nest,” Inés muttered.

The smoke resolved itself into flocks of birds even in Carvajal’s eyes as they drew nearer. All the birds of the coastlands seemed drawn thither by some inexorable summons – seagulls and pelicans, egrets and herons, black skimmers and roseate spoonbills – and the logs were streaked with guano. But the impression of a nest gradually vanished. Now the pile seemed merely a crazy tangle of shattered tree trunks and other flotsam of the gulf, with sand hills heaped around its base.

“And that,” said Carvajal, “if I am not mistaken, is our destination.”

“What makes you so sure?” asked Odisi.

Carvajal shrugged. “Only a feeling.”

Inés nodded. “We’ll investigate it.”

“Should we cut across the dunes?” asked Odisi.

“No,” said Inés. “We’ll keep to the beach for now.”

A low thrum became audible under the crashing of waves. At times the sand beneath their feet seemed to throb. Distance was deceptive in the hazy air, and they found the pile both farther off and much larger than they had supposed. It rose higher and higher in their sight, bleached bone-white and streaked with white droppings, black and decayed at its heart. The salty smell of the surf mingled with the mustiness of age-piled ordure and old rot. Raucous cries filled the air.

They drew opposite the heap and turned up a path that led between the dunes. It took them to a dark archway, rough, but of deliberate construction. The thrum filled the air now, though almost below the threshold of hearing.

“We go in there, I suppose,” muttered Carvajal, not much liking the prospect.

“What do you think, Odisi?” asked Inés.

“I go in to find my death. But now is not the time to turn back.”

“I’ll lead the way,” said Carvajal. “Odisi, perhaps you should bring up the rear.”

Inés nodded, and they went on, groping their way into the cavern of rotten wood. Light filtered through chinks in the pile at first, but the gloom gradually increased until they walked in utter darkness. A dim triangle emerged from the murk before them.

“What is that?” whispered Odisi.

“A door,” said Carvajal. “There must be some kind of building in here.”

“Go on,” said Inés.

The outer hull of the structure seemed made of glass, pitted and iridescent with age. One by one they stepped over the threshold. Cool, dry air smote their faces, a shock after months on the sultry gulf. The long passage before them sloped gently downward, tiled with white ceramic squares laid without mortar. Liquid that glowed like molten iron flowed in a gutter down the center. Its light played over arabesques in blue and white faience on the sloping walls.

A horned figure rose up in the passage. The three intruders froze. Soft white ropes seized them from behind, encircling their limbs before they had a chance to raise their weapons, disarming them within seconds.

The horned one approached. They took him at first for a man in a ritual headdress and a ruffled yellow gown. Then, with revulsion, they saw that he wore no clothing at all. The yellow ruffles were his naked flesh. He was no man, but an invertebrate biped resembling a sea hare or nudibranch. Their captors, who pressed against them now, were of the same kind, with soft, rugose skin that glistened in places.

“Don Pedro’s sea-people,” growled Carvajal.

“What?” said Inés.

Carvajal shook his head. “Something the Aztec told me last night. They must have been hiding in the darkness as we passed.”

“We have been expected,” said Odisi.

Gently but inexorably, their captors began driving them down the passage. Carvajal looked the creatures over, searching for weaknesses. He saw that the soft ropes were internal organs that could be retracted at will. “Disgusting,” he muttered.

The corridor continued straight ahead into the structure. The floor vibrated beneath their feet. They emerged into a polygonal atrium. Triangular doorways alternated with darkened alcoves around the periphery. A glowing trough ran from each door, emptying into a pool surrounding an island at the center. There seven heptagonal pillars encircled a twisted column with a smooth, purple-tinged white sheath like the inside of an oyster shell, jointed like a crab’s plastron and studded with ungainly bosses and black glass bulbs. A geometrical mocarabe like a field of gold-and-blue-inlaid stalactites carpeted the ceiling. Glowing fountains spouted in hanging filigree baskets.

Inés, Carvajal, and Odisi were driven before an alcove and forced to kneel. A luminous jet spurted up within it, revealing a tiled recess. The doll-like figure of Padre Diego, stark naked, rose from a chair.

“Greetings,” he said. “Do not be afraid. You have been chosen.” He advanced from the alcove, nursing an erection.

Odisi made a grunt of surprised disgust. Carvajal spat. “Padre,” cried Inés in a cracking voice, “what have they done to you?”

“I have joined with a communion of minds. Where once we were prisoners of our separate bodies, now we are one, and free.”

“He’s been possessed by devils,” growled Carvajal. “Perverted devils. Mother of goats! Look at his eyes!”

“No,” said Odisi. “He is a zombi, the slave of a black bokor.”

“Look at his head!” cried Inés.

The two men now perceived that the priest had been tonsured. A cable ran from the back of his skull to the recess, swishing softly, like an unwound intestine. Two of the sea-people entered, bearing a bundle of cloth, and proceeded to dress him in a rich black soutane that appeared to have been newly made. They withdrew, and the priest returned to his seat.

A second alcove came to life, revealing Tezozomoctli, also tonsured and cabled. He began to speak in his native tongue, then, with a twitch of his head, switched to Hispanian. “Padre Diego speaks truly,” he said. “We have all joined with…we…hurgh…!” Anguish contorted the Aztec’s features. “Fight!” he screeched. “Fight for your souls! It is Mictantecuhtli, the Lord of Death! He – he is from another – he is mad!”

His face went blank, as though a candle had been snuffed out behind his eyes. He began to speak again, but now with the priest’s mellifluous intonation. “A strong mind, a valuable addition to our collection. Its full assimilation will take time. Join us, that the collection may be complete.”

“We didn’t come here to join your collection,” growled Carvajal.

“We did not refer to you. You are a mixture of types and quite unsuitable. We accept only individuals with the purest blood. Those with specialized social roles or remarkable physical traits are especially attractive. You possess neither.”

Carvajal scowled. “Listen to me, you – ”

“Be silent,” said Odisi, laying his great hand on Carvajal’s shoulder. “Do you not see that he is only a puppet?”

“That is not entirely true,” said the Aztec. “The ones you call Padre Diego and Don Pedro have joined us, lent us their knowledge of your world, given new color to our conjoined spirit.”

“You’ve eaten their brains,” growled Carvajal. “Just like you did Corbelan’s.”

“The one you call Corbelan was necessary, that new connections might be formed for the reception of the one you call Diego, and also for a third, one of the bipeds who come here from time to time to hunt and fish. It had been many solar cycles since we received any of your kind. The eve of our departure draws near, and we are fortunate to have received such diversity unlooked-for. Our makers, who sent us out to seek playthings to lighten the intolerable weight of their existence, will be pleased.”

Lights came on in the other recesses. The adventurers saw members of many races, each wearing a representative costume. A child of the tribe they had encountered, nose pierced by a bone. A yellow-skinned, beardless dwarf clothed in white fur. A prince of Egypt. A princess of Atlantis. A small, hairy man with large golden eyes. A great white ape with an intelligent face. Another ape with long orange hair. Two chairs were empty.

“Madre de Dios,” whispered Inés. “It’s a doll collection.”

“The strong one first,” Tezozomoctli’s voice said.

The sea-people dragged Odisi apart from the others, wrapping their rugose appendages around his crown. He screamed and rolled his eyes. Blood flowed in rivulets down his contorted features. One of the sea-people withdrew. Another advanced. And then it was over. The Yoruban had ceased his struggles. His skull lay open and hollow.

“Now the female,” said Tezozomoctli.

“Like hell!” Carvajal bellowed. He forced himself to his feet, ripping the white appendage from one of his captors. A bundle of internal organs came with it, and the creature curled up in its death-throes. He drove his fist clear through the other’s head. But by that time three more were on him.

“You are most violent,” said the Aztec’s body, “but we bear you no enmity. Go your way, mongrel biped.”

“Carvajal!” screamed Inés. “Don’t leave me!”

“I won’t!” he shouted as he was dragged, writhing, back up the corridor. They tossed him into the tunnel of black rot. The door hissed shut. He beat on it but produced no response.

In despair, he trudged back out to the beach. Stopping at the margin of wet sand, he listened to the roar and hiss of the breakers and the laughing of the gulls overhead. A black skimmer coasted the glassy waves, scooping up fish.

“When one purpose fails, señor, it is good to have another.”

Carvajal turned. Don Pánfilo hobbled toward him, supported by silent natives, of whom there were perhaps twenty, all bearing spears. His leg had been poulticed and splinted anew.

“And what purpose would that be, old man?”

“Revenge!”

“Revenge? Against what?” He pointed at the pile. “Do you know what’s in there? Do any of these people? Hell! Do I?”

“His name is Zisz,” said Don Pánfilo. “These people – the Aywah – tried to make it known by signs. From what I gather, he is a devil, an eater of souls. He has always been here. They placate him and his servants in return for the right to hunt here, but they hate him, too. It seems that they struck this bargain long ago. But he stole a child of theirs yesterday, a breach of contract. He intends to take it into the sky with him, they say. When they first saw us, they thought the sea had sent us to rid them of him.”

“Little did they know that this Zisz stole their child as a result of our coming, said Carvajal. “He’d been holding off on culling one until the eve of his departure. Our landing here put the completion of his collection within reach.”

Don Pánfilo waved his hand. “They have approached the truth as closely as their darkened understanding will allow. For I have come here to silence the idols and burnish the glory of my king. This will accomplish both.”

“How do you propose we do it, old man?”

Silently, Don Pánfilo raised his two withered hands. In one he held the severed limb they had picked up that morning. In the other he held the arquebus. The natives bore the rest of the powder and arms.

#

Carvajal crept down the cave of rotten wood, Tezozomoctli’s macahuitl in one hand, a falchion in the other. Don Pánfilo followed, supported by an Aywah warrior and his wife. All four were slathered in the stinking slime obtained by pounding the severed limb to a jelly. Carvajal carried the arquebus, match cord smoldering.

“Listen, old man,” said Carvajal. “There’s some crazy brujería down here. I don’t know what those two expect to find, but they’d better know that the child is dead.”

“Are you certain, señor? You saw the body?”

“I saw his body, yes.”

“Dead?”

“N-not exactly.”

“Hm! I gather that they are the parents, señor. They have every right to accompany us.”

“Maybe. But – ”

“There is no need to tell a true caballero which way lies honor, señor.”

“Eh, chingate,” Carvajal muttered.

“What was that, señor?”

“Nothing.”

They found the door still closed. They drew aside into the shadows. Carvajal put his fingers to his lips and whistled. A sharp retort split the air. The glass hull shuddered. Hundreds of birds began squawking all at once. Their cries mingled with the loud, warlike whoops now coming down through the damp wood.

The door slid open. Yellow forms poured out, not perceiving the four in hiding. The slime didn’t repel them as Tezozomoctli had claimed, but it did render them invisible. Sounds of fighting began to filter down from above.

“Let’s finish this,” said Carvajal. He swung himself into the thinning stream. With a savage grin he brought the macahuitl down on a shoulder. The creature fell in two pieces. He dealt with several others in a similar way. And then there were no more.

“Come on,” he said. Don Pánfilo and the two Aywah followed him down the passage. He slew what sea-people they met – five in all – but most had been drawn out already.

They reached the atrium. “That’s him, I think,” said Carvajal, pointing to the knobbed pillar. He froze. The light-fountain in a recess began flowing, revealing the child’s body, which rose to its feet. The parents dropped Don Pánfilo, who fell to the floor with a ragged cry, and went down on their knees. The child sprang forward, trailing the cable behind it.

“Look out!” Carvajal shouted, but too late. The child had already buried one small fist in each of the parents’ heads. They sank to the floor, lifeless. With a cry Carvajal brought the macahuitl down, cleaving clean through the small figure.

Now the other alcoves came to life. Figures rose and advanced: Inés and Odisi, Tezozomoctli and Padre Diego, the yellow dwarf, the Egyptian, the Atlantean, the hairy man, the two apes. Don Pánfilo had gotten up on his knees, sword in hand, his single blue eye blazing.

“Sever the cables!” Carvajal cried. And then the fight began.

The princess aimed an awkward blow. He stepped aside, driving his falchion into her abdomen. She fell without a cry. Next he cut off the hairy man’s arm, but then a great, meaty hammer came down on his cranium, sending him to the tessellated pavement. Dazed, he looked up into the white ape’s grinning face. The yellow dwarf came into view. The dwarf snatched up the macahuitl, leaped onto the ape’s back, and beheaded it with one swipe. “Get up, dog!” he said, sneering. The accent was Tezozomoctli’s.

Carvajal obeyed, wielding only his falchion now. Odisi was throttling Don Pánfilo, who had, it seemed, slain the Egyptian and the Aztec. Inés came up behind them and ripped the cable out of Odisi’s skull. The great body fell prostrate. She shoved it into a flowing gutter, where the fluid began to eat away at it.

“Th-thank you, señora,” Don Pánfilo gasped.

“I am no señora,” the woman’s body said, “but a king’s son of Benin.”

The orange-haired ape stepped forward, hands held up in token of peace, its small, close-set eyes glistening.

“Inés?” asked Carvajal. The ape nodded.

“Now is not the time for introductions,” said Tezozomoctli through the dwarf’s body. “The sea-people have returned.” It was only too true. They were pouring from each doorway.

“I’ll put a stop to that,” Carvajal growled. He took a flying leap over the glowing pool, landed, and hammered at the knobbed column with his falchion’s handle. A black bulb shattered like glass. Bundles of flesh like soft pink quartz pulsed within, shrinking from his touch. “Call them off, or I’ll cut you,” he cried.

“Free us, Carvajal,” said Odisi through Inés’ mouth. “Kill that thing and set us free.”

“No,” said Don Pánfilo, hefting the arquebus. “I am near enough to kill it, if it is mortal. Save yourself, señor. I am dead anyway. Avenge me if I fail. Otherwise, bear news of my death to my king, if you ever get off this island alive.”

“So I will, old man. Adios to you all. And to you, too, Padre, if you can hear me. You were right about one thing: I do stink of devils. But shit. I think he likes it in there.”

Tezozomoctli tossed him the macahuitl. “Go, dog of a half-breed,” he called.

Whirling the weapon, moving swiftly to evade the living lassos that sought to ensnare him, Carvajal cut a way to the corridor and ran. The structure throbbed violently. The white fluid boiled.

He flung himself through the closing door, ran back through the rot and ruin, and reached the beach, where the small knot of surviving natives stood. Dusk had descended. Pale pink and yellow melted into lavender velvet overhead.

The pile creaked and shuddered. “Run!” shouted Carvajal. He set the example. The natives followed. They hadn’t gone far when the beach began to reel. A scream split the air. They halted in a straggling line and looked back. A huge orb emerged from the pile like a pitted glass float long adrift in the sea. It rose, shedding logs like bits of straw. The strand gave way, and the sea poured into the cavity left behind, churning and bubbling, a stew of gray mud and black rot and yellow corpses.

The orb rose higher and higher. “Well, damn,” muttered Carvajal.

At that instant, the vessel shuddered and split open. A muffled boom struck them a few seconds later. The orb dropped from the sky and exploded in a ball of white fire and lightning. A moment of calm followed – it seemed an eternity – and then fragments came screaming down all around them, hitting the dunes and sending up plumes of sand. One native fell, his skull split by a shard. Then there was only the murmur of the breakers and the birds’ complaint.

“You were an old woman in life, Don Pánfilo,” said Carvajal, “but you died like a man.”

The natives got to their feet and gathered around Carvajal. A weird, mewling cry came through the gathering dusk. “What is that?” he grunted.

They parted before a thing like a great pink sea cucumber wriggling over the sand, screaming shrilly. “Carvajal! Carvajal, where are you? Carvajal! Don’t leave me!” The voice was Padre Diego’s.

Carvajal stepped back. With startling swiftness, the thing leaped at his face. He brought the macahuitl up. The obsidian razors shore through the creature’s tissue, dividing it in half. The two halves fell to the earth. The insides were partly crystal, partly mechanical, partly organic. Carvajal ground them into the sand with the heel of his boot.

The Aywah gathered closely about him, laying hands on his shoulders and back and arms. Their eyes gleamed with a light he didn’t understand.

He looked out over the gulf. Rafts of yellow seaweed were rolling in on the waves. “One chest of gold, then,” he sighed, touching his fishbone beads. “But let it be a big one.”

 

________________________________________

Raphael Ordoñez is a mildly autistic writer and circuit-riding college professor residing in the southwest Texas hinterlands, eighty miles from the nearest bookstore. His short stories have appeared in several magazines, and his paleozoic adventure fantasy novels, Dragonfly and The King of Nightspore’s Crown, the first two in a planned tetralogy, are available at Amazon. He lives in a rickety old house with his wife and three children, within sight of the grave of a famous gunfighter, and blogs about fantasy, writing, art, and logic at Cosmic Antipodes .

His other Carvajel stories at Heroic Fantasy Quarterly include, Heart of Tashyas, I am Become Death Destroyer of Worlds, and White Rainbow, Brown Devil.