OLD GHOSTS

OLD GHOSTS, A TALE OF AZATLÁN by Gregory D. Mele, art by Justin Pfeil

 

It is not hard to kill a man.

A thrust up, under the ribs; a hard blow to the thin bones of the temple or the base of the skull; a deep cut to the neck or the inside of the limbs, so that the heart’s blood flows — any of these things, and a dozen more, will cut his spirit free.

Learning the War Dance is a long, hard path, for its rhythms must be second nature. You do not make its myriad steps and turns, you become them.  Spear and sword. Mace and knife. Arrow and dart. All do their red work well —  although I find that too many warriors forget the power of the shield, when its bronze-strengthened rim is driven up against the fragile reed of a man’s throat or crosswise into his teeth. Bare hands make for dirtier work, but the deed can be done.

When a trained warrior comes to war, it is not the deed that is hard, no. It is calming the liver and silencing the mind; letting the War God’s madness flow through you without being consumed. You give yourself over to the dance, and do not think. Not of your life, not of your children. Certainly not what becomes of your women should you fall. These are the demons of hesitation; and in war, hesitation is death.

Cut and parry. Thrust and dodge. The taste of copper fills your mouth — is it your death-wound, or the foeman’s life splattered across your face as you shatter his skull? No, in pushing down your fear, you have yet again bit a hole in your own lip.

No matter, keep fighting and later, tell your shield-brothers whatever lie you like; just as they will lie to you.

Do my words bother you, Great One? Why? This is the War Dance, the ancient lore Bloody-Handed Lord Tuwâs gave mankind at the world’s birth. It is the charnel dance we of the legions perform time and again, so that you might sleep soundly in your bed besides your green-eyed, olive-skinned bride, while dark-skinned slaves and servants like myself scurry about indulging your every whim.

It is not hard to kill a man, Great One.

But one already dead?

That is another matter.

 

***

 

 

For three moons, Otzli Three-Rabbit’s ghost had haunted my dreams.

I had not thought of my old companion-at-arms for over a year, and when he first came to me, I thought it nothing more than either a few too many cups of balché-mead, or the price of over-indulging in peccary roasted in chili and chokatl sauce too close to sleep, as my sister always warns me. But he appeared again, and then a third time, always calling my name; an insubstantial shadow with sad, hungry eyes.

Although nearly formless, I heard that thin voice, like wind whispering through pond-reeds, and I knew it for my old friend’s.

Why had he come?

By the end of the first moon, Otzli’s shade had begun taking on his mortal semblance; by the second, he was as I had last seen him: Dressed in a soldier’s kilt and war-shirt, his top-knot torn half-loose from where I had gripped him as I held him down. He reached for me with dead hands and called my name, the words whistling through the bloody ruin of his throat — the gaping hole my knife had made.

I am the son of hunters and a three-captive warrior; there is neither beast nor man that frightens me unto weakness. But the unquiet dead? Such is beyond obsidian or bronze’s ability to put down.

Powerless against Otzli’s nightly visitations, I roamed Mishalál’s grand market, seeking sleeping droughts and protective charms from apothecaries and herb-women. Good coin I paid those charlatans, but I’d have been better served hurling my money from the city walls.  At their behest, I burnt sage in the corners of my home, smeared a vile paste of garlic and maguey about my doorways and windows, ate salt and bitter herbs, and pierced my tongue with thorns, offering the blood to the Lords of the Underworld.

Each night, Otzli returned, more substantial, more emphatic, more hungry than the night before; while I, who avoided closing my eyes until utterly defeated by weariness, awoke drenched in cold sweat, and grew ever weaker.

By the time the third moon of my haunting rose, I could no longer hide my torments from my sister and our servants. My eyes were shadowed, my cheeks hollow, and my skin sallow. Too often my cries pierced their sleep, and sweet Xochimitl would rush into my room to find me wild-eyed, lashing out at visions no one else could see.

At last, my tormentor slipped the Underworld’s bonds so thoroughly, that I felt his bloody hands wrap about me, rotting lips whispering leprous words of retribution with the fetid breath of a newly-opened grave.

“Enough Otzli! Enough!” I cried, as I threw myself at him with all my strength, wrestling him to the ground and dashing my living fist into his dead face. I would have beaten his corpse to pulp, had not old Pachál put his cane around my neck, pulling me — kicking and thrashing — back to sanity.

Only then I saw it was no ghost, but my beautiful sister, her lips torn and her left eye swollen shut where I had struck her in my madness. Horror was writ large on her face, and not just for the violence I had done her: Although a woman of twenty-two years, Xochimitl lives with her brother and not in her husband’s clan-house, because she is Otzli’s widow.

Why did I not seek the wisdom of Lord Xokolatl priests? The Great One forgets, I am not Naakali. I speak your tongue, I read your painted glyphs, and I am very, very good at killing your Empire’s enemies. From a simple spearman, I have risen in the legion; a hundred men leap to my orders. But I am not so young anymore that I do not see the truth: The Empire has dressed me in good armour, and put a sword of gleaming bronze in my brown fist, but I am not you, and you will never truly count me as one of your own.

Does it matter to you, Great One, that my tribe are the Tótomi? That we are not the same as the Zapulche, the Atonek or the dozen other tribes that dwell within the Empire’s boundaries? Do you know that we spoke different languages, had different gods, and followed different laws from each other before you came to our shores?

No. To you we are all Masetekka, the “Maize People”. Perhaps we are no longer helots, as we were in the days of your ancestors, but nor are we your peers. Would you teach me to drive one of your golden chariots, or let me carry my legion’s banner in a triumph? Would you seat me beside your noble self at one of your fine feasts, or let me take an olive-skinned, Naakali maiden to wife?

The Great One is silent, but your silence confirms my words — we can never be one of you. And if you never forget this, my Lord, I assure you, neither do we. It is not merely foolish to do so; it is often fatal.

No, the great priests of Lord Death in their somber temple were uninterested in aiding me, at least, not for any price that I could afford.

Thus, I found myself in the place where all Tótomi — Maize Folk — go for aid in such matters: the house of a tepatiani, or “spirit-healer”.

You would call her a witch.

 

***

 

Siwakalpa was not what I envisioned a ‘witch’ to be. She did not dwell in a jungle hut, but in a small, respectable house near the city of Mishalál’s western gate. Her only ‘minion’ was a young, cheerful girl of ten or eleven year whom she called her apprentice, and her only ‘familiar’ a singularly disinterested parrot I never heard speak. Not young, she was also no withered crone. An unlined face framed by night-black hair suffused with long, grey streaks that flowed from her temples, making her seem young-old. She was handsome, more than fair, with a nose perhaps once broken so that it was not quite straight, and dark eyes that saw too much and seemed to blink too little.

You smile, Great One. Perhaps you think she was a young woman, streaking her hair to seem older, thereby appearing more legitimate to clients such as I?  Perhaps, but Pachál says she looked thus when she saved his leg from the wound-pus, after the physicians said it must come off if he would live. I remember that day well, for he was preparing the house for my coming of age celebration and fell from our roof, the bone bursting through the flesh. That was just under fifteen years ago.

Siwakalpa was known and respected by the folk of Mishalál, and truth was, I had nowhere else to turn. Thus, I found myself sitting on a reed mat before her hearth, as the spirit-healer lay curled on her side before me, listening to my tale as she played with a bracelet of what seemed a man’s teeth, drilled and set with small, colored stones.

“We mortals see everything as one thing: You are a man,” she said in her low, husky voice. She appraised me frankly, much as the ocelot does a rabbit, “and I a woman. My student, Mitla, is a girl-child, Popili is a parrot. It is a simple, pleasant way of looking at things.”

I sighed. This was not an auspicious beginning.

“It is a pleasant way to look at things, but it is a lie. A man is no such thing as ‘a man;’ he is the sum of many parts.” Her long-fingered hand slipped forward and settled over my bare chest. Her touch was hot, even feverish. Even in my depleted state I was still a man, and could not ignore the way the movement gave glimpses of a taut belly decorated with red-brown tattoos, or the curves of her breasts that could be seen beneath the triangular wipil-mantle she wore in place of a more modest blouse.

“Here, is the yolatl. You see it as ‘the heart,’ but that organ is just a vessel for the seed of mortal life. The yolatl is what gives us life here on earth, and it returns to the earth when life is finished. Unto the yolatl is twined the tonali, the life-spark that dwells in all the worlds at once. It is our luck, our fate. It makes you you and me me. Do you see?”

I nodded as if I were hearing great wisdom, but in truth, my heart sank. This ‘spirit-healer’ was just one more charlatan, wrapped in a more pleasing form.

“But as the tonali is not of the body, nor even of this earth, it is not always held fast by it. It can be rattled loose, struck free by a hard blow to the head, or may wander off of its own accord through dreams. Such dream-walking is how we tepatiani work our cures and bargain with the spirit-brothers.”

“This seems a good thing, then,” I suggested hopefully.

Her dark eyes regarded me as a rich man does a beggar. “Do you feel blessed, Nopaltzin Seven-Reed?”

I lowered my eyes.

“Spirit-healers are trained to walk the worlds, but the untrained tonali is often pulled to Tzatlokan, the Underworld. There, as it travels, it can be captured by either sorcerers, or by those who dwell below — ‘The Ones Who Are Not Our Brothers’.”

Despite my skepticism, I shuddered then, for those shadowy demons of the Underworld were known in the legends and stories told in clan-house and temple-school to fill errant children with dread.

She poured something clear into a pair of red clay cups and gave one to me. As I took it from her, our hands touched.  My fingers tingled. The spirit-healer saw me start and smiled slyly.

“Your body senses the power of my tonali,” she said softly, sipping from her cup. “This is hopeful, for the yolatl itself is deaf, dumb and blind to the Otherworld. Some measure of your souls must still be intact.”

“Otzli’s shade has captured my soul?”

Siwakalpa laughed, a melodious sound, for all it mocked me. “Think you so? Perhaps you have no need of me, then! No, Nopaltzin, I think it not so simple. If a living man is many parts, why should the ‘dead’ be different?

I started to open my mouth, but she held up her hand, “No, do not speak, do not ask, just listen.

“What you call a ‘shade’ is not one thing, but many possible things. Here, in our world, it is usually a bit of the yolatl that has forgotten to die, and because it has not, or cannot, let go, it exists as a shadow, trapped in a single moment and place. Such a sad thing is just a memory of a life, and is no more that person than are you or I.

“But when a ‘ghost,’ comes forth from the Underworld, that is something altogether different. I have spoken of the yolatl and the tonali, but there is also the ekawili, the shadow-side of the soul. The gods love duality, warrior, and twine all things in pairs. Light must have darkness, and if the tonali is the spark of heat and light within us, then it must have its twin.”

“The ekawili,” I said softly, forgetting I had been told to be quiet.

She smiled a lop-sided grin and brushed a forelock of hair from her face. (She wore her long hair as loose as a virgin, or one of your Naakali ladies, rather than tied high on her head in twin braids, as a proper matron should.)

“Perhaps you are not hopeless. Drink.”

I downed the cup with a grimace. It was mescal flavored with chilies and some sort of bitter herb. To my horror, she refilled it at once.

“The shadow-soul is the vessel for our darkness: our disappointments, our fears, our rage. When the tonali enters the Underworld, the ekawili goes with it. It is said, but the Lords of Tzatlokan alone know the truth, that after we live our mortal lives and descend to the Underworld, that in time the ekawili, now reborn as a pure tonali, ascends to our world once more, and our spirit is reborn. Through the course of a life, the new tonali grows heavy and a new ekawili is formed, which descends to Tzatlokan in death, and so forth.”

All this talk of souls in many parts, each with its own nature, purpose and destiny was somewhat beyond me, or at least beyond my patience. It had been rather more than a day since I’d slept, and my head was starting to swim with two cups of mescal on a near-empty belly. I set my cup down and leaned forward angrily. “All I care to know, witch, is what haunts me, and how we make it stop.”

Siwakalpa’s eyes flashed at the name ‘witch,’ and her lips curled in something like a sneer, revealing teeth far too white, although none too straight, for a woman her age. “We do nothing, Nopaltzin Seven-Reed; I do. And I shall do nothing but watch you shrivel away and die if you do not mind your voice.”

Bold words, as I was a head taller, far heavier and, but for a young girl and a bird, we were alone in her house. Yet she clearly had no fear of me, and I suspected that I was not the one with the power to threaten and cajole, so I muttered an apology. The spirit-healer shrugged dismissively, then gestured for me to again drain my goblet. As I gagged down that vile brew, she spoke.

“It is my belief that your friend Otzli Three-Rabbit’s death was a harsh one; sudden, unexpected and violent. Clinging to the life that was, rather than the one that is to be, his ekawili is afraid of its own rebirth, and now feeds upon your tonali, draining your spirit of its vitality.”

Her words filled with me horror, for her explanation made simple, obvious sense. My heart pounded and sweat beaded my brow. I started to speak, but my tongue was thick and my mouth dry, so I just nodded dumbly.

“Our challenge,” the spirit-healer said, rising high on her knees.  “Is to sever that bond; either by convincing Otzli’s shadow to let go, or failing that, to compel it.”

My head was swimming. “H…how?”

Another noncommittal shrug. I leaned forward to press her, but felt myself falling onto my side. Siwakalpa slipped to all fours and crawled besides me. Her hair fell about me, caressing my bare chest in its soft waves, as she pushed me onto my back. She pulled down my eyelid and seemed satisfied by whatever she saw. I realized she was now holding a small plate in her other hand and was blowing gently over it. Then I saw nothing, as a stinging ash filled my eyes.

I struggled to rise, but fell back onto the thick petate-mat, moaning in pain.
“It is best not to fight the tolache leaf once it starts taking effect,” she said softly, arranging my arms and legs. “Now, as to ‘how,’ that is simple. We must travel to Tzatlokan, you and I, and see Otzli Three-Rabbit. It is quite clear what has happened. What is less clear, is why Otzli chooses to haunt you. And what is least clear of all, at least to me, Nopaltzin Seven-Reed,” her voice grew as hard and sharp as the small, obsidian blade I felt her pressing to my chest, “is that why he would haunt you seems the one question you felt no need to ask.”

I grimaced as a sharp, obsidian edge sliced into my flesh.

“But I shall find out.”

 

***

 

If Siwakalpa did not look the way I imagined a witch, what came next fit my every imagination of the sorcerer’s art.

The tolache leaf tightened its grasp around my eyes, thinning the wall between worlds, so I cannot say for certain what was real, what was leaf-madness and what was truly the passage of our spirits into the Underworld. My memories are scattered fragments and impressions: A quill brush dipping at the bloody cut on my chest, using my own dripping life as paint; a woman’s humming; a parrot’s agitated squawking; the thick scent of burning copal. Siwakalpa, her tattoos twining and writhing about her lean, muscular body like living serpents, passed a smoking censor about my body and blew that resinous smoke into my face, so that I gasped and choked.  She drank from a bowl until her cheeks filled like a water-skin, and then sprayed their contents — more wretched mescal —above my head and below my feet.  There was sudden pain in the soles of my feet, as if they were being pricked by thorn-needles. (They were.) From somewhere came the shaking of a rattle and a sing-song chant, but I hadn’t the strength to sit-up and seek it out.

At some point I vomited, perhaps more than once, and the spirit-healer wiped my mouth and told me the gates to Tzatlokan stood open. As she spoke her hair seemed to writhe with centipedes, and thick, black blood bubbled out of her mouth and splashed on her naked breasts, whose dark nipples had become blinking, rolling eyes. I screamed and clawed at her face, but with long, strong fingers she pressed me down and held me fast, and then my senses failed me entirely and all was darkness.

The reprieve was short lived.

As swiftly as my eyes had darkened, the light returned, and I was in that smoke-filled house once more. Siwakalpa’s countenance was no longer a thing of horror. The copal scent was still thick, but the vapors were clearing. The hearth fire had burnt down to embers, suggesting many hours had passed. I shivered. The air was cool, and my leaf-fever had broken. I tried to speak, but my throat was hoarse. The spirit-healer pressed a bowl to my lips, and I hesitated. But her eyes brooked no rebellion, so I drank. It was water, cool and clear.

“We are arrived, Nopaltzin Seven-Reed,” she said solemnly.

I sat up with a start. “We…we are in the Underworld?”

Siwakalpa nodded. “At the moment, in my own small portion of it, a receiving room, you might say. Tzatlokan is vast, and the Lands of the Dead are but one portion of it; one does not enter its heart anymore than he enters a great-lord’s house and steps directly into his sleeping quarters. Each tepatiani shapes a small piece of the Underworld for his or her own, a house in which the yaotl and tonali may join.” She gestured about her. “As I am fond of my mortal home, I saw no reason to change its appearance here. Come.”

She helped me to my feet. My legs were wobbly but after a moment supported my weight. With a start, I realized that I was naked. Seeing my confusion, she laughed. “You are new to Tzatlokan, warrior. One always comes to the Underworld naked.”

Siwakalpa was also naked, but her body was decorated with a myriad of adornments: Golden armbands and anklets, a silver and jade girdle in the form of a coiling serpent swallowing its tail, and a necklace of what might be claws. Braided in her hair were bits of bone, silver and gold. Her cheeks, throat and breast were painted with a jaguar’s spots, and small, turquoise pendants hung from a snakeskin girdle. She seemed feral and regal; one of the jaguar goddesses come to life.

My appraisal was met with another dismissive shrug. “I have come to Tzatlokan many times, and have both won and fashioned many items of power here. But I am happy,” she said with a mischievous grin, “that my spirit-self so pleases you.”

I was suddenly, painfully aware of my erection jutting before me like a spear; once more a boy of thirteen summers caught spying on the women’s baths.

“Can we just be about this?”

“Of course. Come.”

She took up a staff of polished ceiba wood, otherwise unadorned, then led me out into the street. In the mortal world, Siwakalpa’s house is found near the city walls, within a modest, but well-maintained district of orderly, paved streets and small, adobe houses. But here there were no towering walls, nor even other houses; just a street of granite stones, running through a field of glistening black sand. It was twilight, but there was neither sun, nor clouds nor moon to be seen.

I stooped to touch the sand, but the spirit-healer stayed my hand and shook her head ‘no’. Straightening, I followed her along the Black Road.

Travel in the Underworld is a strange and wondrous thing. There is a horizon, but it seems not to be set; what appears at the edge of one’s vision as they walk may or may not be what they find awaits them. When we set out from Siwakalpa’s house, a vast cypress forest dwelt at the edge of the black-sand plain. Yet as we walked, the forest grew no nearer, and then was suddenly gone from our sight. Looking about, I saw it lay far and away behind us, though the road had never curved. I asked my guide, but her answer added little clarity.

“The Woodland of Fortunate Repose is not our destination.”

We saw many strange things in that place: Serpent-birds with black and white feathers coiling through the sky, packs of wolves who seemed to be made of living obsidian and…things that had no mortal corollary. My guide insisted that so long as we were on the Black Road, such creatures would pay us no heed, nor should we, they.
There were other travelers on the Road, mostly glimpsed at a distance. Small packs of naked men and women, led by impossibly tall priests carrying long, obsidian-tipped spears, garbed in the skull-faced raiment of Lord Xokolatl. I realized the priests were herdsmen — literal shepherds of souls. I saw one convoy of the dead led from the Road into the black sand. Immediately, they began to wail, their cries like the screams of babes torn from their mother’s breasts, but the priests lowered their spears and forced them on. We soon caught up with the tormented. Blood and ribbons of torn flesh spattered what I now realized was ground obsidian, a fine coating of glass concealing sharper and larger chunks below. The dead begged for mercy, but the silent priests prodded them on until they were waist deep, then began making them scrub and scour themselves with the glass sand.

My stomach heaved and twisted —could the spirit-self vomit? —with horror.  If I had had a bow, a javelin, even a stash of stones, I would have come to their defense. Siwakalpa stopped and watched me, then gently took my hand.
“These are the Fields of Wailing Regret, the place of mourners who dealt themselves death by their own hands. It is not our concern. Come.”

But I resisted her pull.
“Despair drives them to an early death, so they are tortured further? That is monstrous!”

The spirit-healer shook her head, making the many trinkets in her long hair chime.

“Who are you or I to criticize the Lords of Tzatlokan or Their methods? I told you much of the tonali and the ekawili, Nopaltzin, not necessarily all. The Land of the Dead is never so simple as it seems, and many things that seem torture are mercy. If the shadow-soul will be made pure, it must purge itself of its own darkness.  Only then can it come to Lord Xokolatl’s throne, a glistening skeleton scrubbed clean of its flesh — the flesh of sin, hatred and regret — so that it might drink the Waters of Forgetfulness and be born anew. Death’s daemons are not monsters, they are guides and guardians.  Their task is a grim one, but it is not for us to judge. Come.”

We left the wailers behind, but their screams and cries —the voicing of their despair and self-loathing —filling the air behind us.

My own sins are many, Great One, and in recent days I have wished to hang myself and so put my conscience to rest. But then I remember the Fields of Wailing Regret and live on. Better to die in battle and find a place amongst the Shining Ones of Lord Hatûm’s eternal war-host than to spend a lifetime scouring away your flesh in post-mortem atonement, with only oblivion for a reward.

 

***

 

I do not know how spirit-healers pass time and again through the scabrous lands of the dead and remain sane. Perhaps they do not. Certainly, the many visions of Lord Death’s necrotic and dreary realm that I witnessed are burned into my mind and shall haunt my sleep forever more. There is no profit, and certainly no kindness, in describing them all to you, Great One, but for one.

Near our journey’s completion, I saw that the Black Road passed onto an open plain of tall, yellow grasses, through which a broad, dark river flowed. Well beyond the river rose tall cliffs, on which stood a city of malachite, girt with a triple wall. It was the first habitation I had seen in the Underworld, excepting Siwakalpa’s own, but it was no place for the living; dour and grim, encircled by a racing river of boiling flame. There was one gate, huge and pillared, that no warring force of men, not even an army of the lost Godborn themselves, might ever overthrow. A vast pyramid rose high over the walls, like the sun temple found in holy Azatlán, but far taller. At its apex stood twin pillars of flame.

I heard a cacophony of moans, the cracking of fierce lashes, and the dragging of chains.  Of course, we could not have been near enough to hear any such thing. I suspect it was my imagination, made fertile with fear, but who can say? The Underworld is not ruled by the laws of our own.

I am a warrior, Great One, the taking and submitting of cities is my business, the killing of men my craft, but I felt small and afraid when I beheld those walls. Siwakalpa saw me tremble and nodded.

“You are right to be frightened, Nopaltztin Seven-Reed. This is Kulanipolko, the City of Wrath. Between those brazier flames stands the house of Lady Tzifonek — ‘Avenging Murder’ — Lord Xokolatl’s ever-furious and blood-soaked daughter who punishes the crimes of murder: Patricide, fratricide and homicide. Here secret crimes are revealed, no matter how well-hidden in the upper world. Here murderers are brought to justice and the shades of the unavenged come to plead for vengeance. This is where we shall find Otzli Three-Rabbit.”

The Great One blanches — perhaps he is familiar with that kindly goddess and Her sisters? Perhaps, like me, he has cause to fear Her fury?

“Here?” I asked nervously.

The spirit-healer shrugged shoulders surprisingly broad for such a trim-figured woman. “I do not make the Road, warrior, I only follow it. Otzli’s shade dwells within, whether as plaintiff or penitent I cannot say. Do you wish to go no farther?”

She asked the question casually, but there seemed a veiled accusation in her words. Looking back up to those cyclopean walls, then down at my own nakedness, I shuddered.

“No. I would speak with my sister’s-husband. But I would rather not enter such a dire place.”

“Put your spirit at ease: We do not enter Kulanipolko itself. Only the dead may pass through the Gates of Crimson-Painted Contrition, and we are both, as yet, very much alive.”

She smiled, I think to put me at ease, but the word ‘yet’ worried me. Turning from those grim walls, we came to the river and stopped. There was no bridge, nor did the Black Road extend beyond. As we approached, I saw that near the bank stood a small pyramid of skulls, no higher than my knee and mortared together to form a foundation from which stood a tall, wooden pole — really just a length of dead tree — cut to fit in its cranial base. From the single, gnarled and withered branch hung a large conch-shell horn on a silver chain, such as the war-heralds used to signal the start of battle.

Reaching behind her neck, Siwakalpa removed her collar of jaguar’s claws. Holding them aloft, she murmured a prayer or incantation —I am told that they are not one and the same thing—and then placed the necklace over my own head. Taking my face in her hands, she stood on her toes to kiss my forehead, then pressed her lips to mine. It was not a romantic gesture, but a ceremonial one, and her lips were as cold on my spirit-self’s mouth as her mortal body had burned with an inner fire. “It is not I who has business here, Nopaltzin Seven-Reed. It is your blood and your need that has carried us here; if you would speak with Otzli, you must call him forth.”

She stepped back, leaving me alone besides the pole as if to emphasize her words. Steadying my hand, I reached out and slipped the conch-horn off its perch. Holding it to my mouth with both hands, I blew deeply. At once a deep, resonant sound bellowed forth — the moans of the unquiet dead carried on a monsoon wind.

Time passed. Nothing happened. I looked back to my companion, who shrugged noncommittally. I blew the horn a second time.

“Otzli!” I cried. “Otzli Three-Rabbit!”

All was quiet across that amber plane.

I waited for perhaps fifty heartbeats. From fearful, I now felt foolish. I blew the horn a third time. “Otzli Three-Rabbit, I call you forth! It is Nopaltzin Seven-Reed, come to Tzatlokan; a living man at the borders of the Deadlands. Come forth!”

A dozen heart beats. Two dozen, three dozen more. I turned back to Siwakalpa and shook my head. “Something is wrong. He does not come.”

The spirit-healer said nothing, merely pointed beyond me. I turned back towards the river and almost dropped the conch-horn.

Otzli Three-River stood at the river’s edge, just as I had last seen him in life. Short and broad-shouldered, as are many Tótomi, with his mother’s hooked, Zapulche nose and slightly drooping, mournful eyes. He wore a wide loin and hip cloth of thick, quilted cotton, woven in green, blue and yellow — his clan colors — and a sleeveless, blue tunic of brushed llama wool. Tall sandals fitted with anklets of polished red stone, twins to the bands about his wrist, covered his feet.

Did I say Otzli was as I had last seen him in life? No. For he was pale, as only the bloodless are pale, and a ragged wound made a second mouth across his throat.

“Hello, my brother. My slayer,” the dead man said.

 

***

 

And there it was, as naked and open as my own body. Nervously, I quickly looked back to Siwakalpa. Leaning impassively on her staff, her long hair shadowing her face, she said nothing.

She already knew. Or at least suspected. Yet she had brought me here, to this confrontation.

“Should I feel guilty?” I asked, my voice rising. “It is not I who am the betrayer.”

Otzli chuckled, an odd sound, for the air whistled through his rent throat. “We stand in the Land of Shades, Noplatzin, for no reason but that you held me down and cut my throat. I think it fair to say the fault is yours.”

I clenched my fists impotently. “Liar!”

“The dead do not lie, Nopaltzin,” Siwakalpa’s voice said calmly from behind me. “Although they do not always speak all they know.”

Otzli inclined his head in acknowledgment towards the witch, but his eyes — more alike to how they had been in life than to the hungry, burning lights of my dreams — never left my own.  “You would do well to listen to the tepatiani, false brother.”
“Brother?” I hissed. My voice trembled with anger. “We were brothers-in-battle, made brothers-in-law when your cloak was tied to Xochimitl’s. It was you who joined my family, and you who betrayed it when you blackened her eyes and put your shaft in another woman while my sister’s belly was filled with your seed! You…you…”

I realize that, among you nobles, marriage is merely a thing of alliance Great One; a wife expects her husband’s dalliances with his slaves, his whores, perhaps even an old, childhood lover. I am told that many a Naakali lady has indulgences of her own, ignored by an indifferent mate so long as she has already borne his heir. It is not so with us; a wealthy man may make use of his slaves if his wife is disinterested, or unable, to fill his bed, but he does not shame her by lying with another freewoman. And surely, even amongst the Great, it is not ‘noble’ to strike a pregnant woman in castigation for discovering your own infidelity?

I thought not.

I threw these things in Otzli’s dead face, my voice rising to a shout. Were the River of Death not between us, I’d have hurled myself at him and seen what my naked spirit-self might do to destroy him a second time.

My former brother-in-law stared at me with eyes wide and mouth agape.

“Your words make no sense, Nopaltzin. I did none of these things. I awoke from a stupor, to the sound of your shouting. I saw you, covered in blood, a living serpent coiled about your waist, charging me with knives in your hands. Naked and empty-handed, I defended myself. Then, you murdered me.”

“Now who speaks madness! I called your name and you hurled yourself at my throat!” I said angrily. “Shouting incoherently, calling me a ‘demon’! Even biting at my face!” I gestured to the scar my chin still carries. You can see it here.

Siwakalpa’s sinuous voice came from just behind me.

“I told you, Nopaltzin, the dead do not lie. They cannot.”

Yet Otzli’s recollections were madness. When Xochimitl arrived at my door weeping, her cheek swollen and her eye bruised, I had set out for my brother-in-law’s house at once. True, I entered in a fury, bellowing his name, but there were no weapons in my hand, and certainly no serpent about my waist!

Bewildered, I looked to the witch and back to Otzli’s shade. “But…”

“I said the dead do not lie; I did not say they cannot be deceived. Think of the tolache-leaf that brought you here. For the first time, she spoke directly to my brother-in-law. “Otzli Three-Rabbit, I am Siwakalpa-tepatiani.”

“You are known in Kulanipolko,” Otzli said in his flat, hollow voice.

“Then it should be known that if the dead do not lie, neither do I. And I say that all here speak truth – as they know it. I believe all you have seen, and I say that before Nopaltzin ever came to your house, you were a man poisoned. Will you hear my counsel?”

He smiled wryly, the first of the living man’s personality I had seen preserved in this drab shade. “What more can I possibly lose?”

Then she spoke and we realized neither of us were the betrayer, only the betrayed.

 

***

 

I awoke in the spirit-healer’s mortal house.

The hearth was warm, that damn parrot was squawking, and my limbs ached and burned as happens when one lays on their side too long.  Siwakalpa was already awake, and was now wiping dried vomit from my face with a damp cloth.  Seeing me awake, she smiled, more in relief than pleasure.

“You have your answers?”

“Only some of them. Meeting Otzli created new ones. Ones I wish didn’t need answering.”

The witch nodded sympathetically.

“Such comes all-too-often from speaking with the dead. Personally, I find there is usually little profit, and never comfort, in it. Are you certain you wish to see this thing through?”

“If we do not, Otzli does not gain his justice.”
“True, but he has forgiven you. His shadow shall haunt you no longer. The ties between your tonali and his ekawili are complex ones; the price to cut them free may be higher than the reward. The retributions of Tzatlokan are best delivered in Tzatolkan; I would not be too quick to call Lady Tzifonek into this world, Nopaltzin Seven-Reed. “

I shook my head. “It is a manner of family and honor, Siwakalpa-tepatiani. Someone—someone we believed a friend—betrayed us all: Otzli, Xochimitl and I. They cost a man his life, a mother her unborn child and I, my honor, unless this is set aright.”

“Honor? Much is said of it, far more lost because of it.” Her voice sounded tired and sad. “Very well, I will tell you what needs be done. Listen, now…”

 

***

 

When I at last returned home, nearly two days had passed, and my household was mad with worry. Pachál forgot his place and gripped my arms warmly. Marí wept. Xochimitl flew to my arms and hugged me close, then riddled me for details about what had transpired with the tepatiani: Was there really a ghost haunting me? Did we learn why? Had the spirit-healer set me free? What would happen now?

I assured my sister that the visit had been successful, if none too pleasant. The ghost was of a man I had killed, who felt his death unjustified. But now we had spoken, and he would trouble my dreams no longer, so long as we remembered and honored our dead with a feast.  I set my sister the task of ordering our house and preparing the feast, then saw to writing the invitations myself. (Yes, in the Low Speech’s demotic, Great One – I am no scribe, and my hand is not up to the painted glyphs of High Naakal. Besides, my guests were all Masetek – how many of them would even be able to read such?)

I did not tell Xochimitl the feast’s true purpose, nor confirm the angry ghost’s identity.  I suppose, much like the dead themselves, I had learned that one can deceive through omission as easily as through lies.  I would tell my sister the truth after Otzli’s shade was at peace.

I spared no expense on the remembrance-feast. There was to be roasted turkey in green mole sauce, quail stuffed with picked apples served over rice flavored with stewed tomatoes, garlic and wild onions; grilled pumpkin with a honey glaze, and tamalis served with dipping sauces. Xochimitl was a flurry of activity, racing from task to task, fretting over the day-servants hired to help she and Marí in the kitchen, snapping at the men delivering amphorae of balché, moving furniture, and setting the long table in our courtyard.  Fortunately, the servants knew to fall in order when my sister was in charge, and soon all took on the shape of a fine celebration.

I was equally nervous, but for very different reasons. I was hosting a dozen guests — and at least one was a traitor. Tonight, he or they would be held to account. I watched the house coming to order, nervously turning a black araucana egg in my hand.

Yes, Great One, I said black. It was no normal egg, and its ‘yolk’ was the means of Otzli’s and my vengeance. I just needed a few moments alone in the kitchens.

The guests were arriving. It was quite a collection, from Ulkulwa Silversmith to Itomi Five-Reed, a four-captive warrior whose name is undoubtedly known even to you. My sister had insisted on inviting Atili, one of our clan-sisters and her closest friend, a clever young woman whose intelligence was wasted on a husband twice her age and half her wit. I liked her well-enough and could ignore her husband. Sadly, in Atili’s train came her brother Tolek, a too-pretty, willow-reed of a man, a warrior in name but with neither captives nor accomplishments.

The others? I have given your clerks their names, Great One, but those who had anything worth telling are already dead.

We may live under Naakali rule, but my people cling to our traditions, and have certain formalities that must be observed before guests sit to table. One such is the blessing of the doorways with palm-wine, a task performed by the matron of the house — in this case, my sister. It is only after this that the master of the house enters and takes his seat. This was my chance.

I quietly stepped out of the house and crossed the yard to our small kitchen. The servants were putting meat onto serving platters and scurrying to carry them to the courtyard. Without hesitating, I picked up one of their carving knives and stepped over to the cook-fire, from which hung a cauldron of pozolli-stew. It was my sister’s crowning achievement; the dish that ceremonially concludes an Otomí feast.

Striking the knife’s edge against the black egg, I watched as its bloody yolk fell into the hominy. Swallowing hard, I hesitated, unsure. Then, hardening myself, I held my left hand over the pot and pressed the knife to my palm.  A small slice and the blood began to flow. I spoke the words Siwakalpa had taught me:

“Tzifonek! Bloody-gowned Lady of Vengeance, hear my cry! I plead to you, avenge these heinous deeds. I beg for retribution, not in my name, but that of your son-in-wrath, Otzli Three-Rabbit, who lies in Tzatlokan cold and forgotten, while his betrayers walk beneath the sun. Descend on razor-wings, O Kindly One, and grant me the vengeance that I seek! Let the rivers all run red, and allow me my revenge!”

It was done.

I was just pressing a rag to my hand when Xochimitl found me.

“Nopaltzin! I have been looking for you everywhere! The guests are already seated — what have you done!”

For a moment I thought she had overheard the invocation, but then I realized she had seen my cut hand and was merely expressing a combination of sororal worry and hostess agitation. I shrugged and smiled sheepishly.

“In swords and spears I am well-versed; it seems cooking knives I am not.”
“Here, let me see! Ninny — if you hadn’t been stealing food you wouldn’t have been cut.” She fussed and fumed but in short order had staunched the bleeding with a simple bandage and led me back to greet our guests.

That night, I played lord of the feast with a rubber smile and a hollow heart. I welcomed them; I invoked the Maize Lady and the Mead Lord; I thanked Wahtabai Mixkoatl, Lord of the Hunt, for our meat; I even made a show of making the first cut into the turkey, beginning the feast.

There was all the laughter and small talk that accompanies such festivities. I played my role as best I might, but I am a warrior, not a courtier, and subterfuge does not come naturally. I would have rather charged a line of enemy spears than sat there, all smiles and laughter, as I waited for the pozolli to be served. When at last the time came, I placed a heaping plate onto the offertory fire, while I recited the names and deeds of our family now crossed into Tzatlokan.

I saved Otzli’s name for last, pouring the pozolli onto the flames, and watching each guest’s face as they ate in turn from the cauldron.

I am not sure what I expected. Mayhap for the guilty to choke, eyes bulging, as they declared their guilt in a grand gesture and fell dead. Or perhaps a demon to rise from the stew and drag them screaming into the Underworld.

Instead, we all sang songs to the ancestors and ate pozolli, which was delicious, despite the bloody yolk concealed within.  Then the men smoked their clay pipes and drank mescal, while the women adjourned to another room to sip dandelion wine. There had been no dramatic deaths, no Underworld demons, nothing but fattened bellies and heads made soft with good drink.

In time, we said our goodnights. The house was empty but for the servants, Xochimitl and I. My sister shut and barred the door against the night. Walking up to me, she took my cut hand in her own and studied it critically. “Does it hurt?”
“Throbs somewhat. Nothing more.”
She nodded. “It is a good thing, you have done, brother, honoring the dead. Do you think the ghost is satisfied?”

I frowned.  “It is my hope,” I said, noncommittally. “I have tried to do all he asked.”

But I felt I had failed Otzli once more.

 

***

 

I awoke to screams.

In an instant, I was on my feet, snatched up my sword and was racing down the short hall that led to my sister’s room.  My heart, if not my mind, knew what I would find.

Xochimitl writhed naked on her mat, her skin glistening with sweat — and blood. So much blood. It flowed from her nose and her ears; from the lines in her palms and the base of her nails. I ran and fell to my knees beside her, trying to still her thrashing, but her short legs kicked out with surprising strength, battering away my arms and tearing away the covers, revealing a petate-mat stained red.

I heard Marí screaming behind me, but my eyes were only for my sister. I cradled her in my arms, praying feverishly to Lady Tzifonek for mercy, knowing myself a fool for doing so —She is called Avenging Murder, not Regrets Forgiven. I had summoned the goddess’s vengeance into the mortal world neither knowing — nor caring — whom it would engulf, so long as my own soul was cleansed thereby.

Now it was cleansed in my sister’s blood.

Xochimitl was weeping, tears of blood flowing from glassy, unseeing eyes. She reached out her hands, not to me, but to something unseen.

“It was Otzli…,” she gasped, blood gurgling from her mouth, splattering on my chest as I held her close. The light in her eyes was already fading.  “Otzli…Nopaltzin…forgive…”

Then she was gone.

She went not to the Underworld alone. That night there was wailing throughout the homes of our clan. For Xochimitl, yes, but also for Atili, whose life ended in a vomit of her own blood.

 

***

 

I buried my sister with all the honors due a fine lady, even if she were not one.

Embalmers rubbed her body with fragrant herbs and adorned her face with make-up. I brushed and braided her hair myself, though Marí insisted it was women’s work, unbefitting a warrior. We dressed Xochimitl in her finest clothes, brooches and pins. When it was done, I could almost believe she slept. Then we seated her body in the living room, knees together, back erect, so that all might come and do her final honor. This sitting of the dead, Great One, is a strange lie we Masetekka tell ourselves: We let our dead hold court in their homes one last time, ignoring the wooden rods that holds the dead one’s back upright, or the maguey-ropes that tie their limbs in place.

The mourning rites lasted five days, one to honor each of the four Lords who rules over the Underworld, and one to consign my sister’s body to its final rest with our ancestors.

On the first day, I sacrificed a small dog to Weykoyotl the Loyal Hound, so He would lead Xochimitl safely to the Underworld.

On the second, I burned copal and tobacco to Lord Naxt, the Dreaming God, who guards the entrance to Tzatlokan, praying He would allow her spirit passage, so she would not wander forever as a hungry ghost.

The third day, I paid a small fortune to the priests of Lord Xokolatl, who wrapped her body in embalming linens, and placed a wooden death mask over her face. This was the hardest day, for the rites and prayers to Lord Death are meant to ask for fair judgment of the departed, and I knew well what that judgment would be. I wept many bitter tears.

On the fourth day offerings were made to Itzam-Ye, Lord of Fate, so He would grant Xochimitl’s spirit a prosperous rebirth, and I can say I have never prayed so fervently, nor been so eager to offer a cup of my blood to a god’s altar.

Then it was the fifth day, and we were placing my sister’s mummy-bundle upon a bier, and professional mourners were carrying her through the streets of Mishalál and out to the City of the Dead. I stumbled along in their wake.

I dimly remember lowering her into the earth, saying the final words and hosting her funeral feast. But what I remember most clearly is that when night had come and the guests had gone, I sat alone in our living room where Xochimitl had on many nights sang, or woven, or enticed me to play board games, at which she was ever my master. Then I wept and drank and wept some more, cursing Otzli’s vengeance almost as much as I cursed myself.

 

***

 

Not a full week had passed when pretty-faced Tolek the popinjay came to my home.

I was easy enough to find; if my day’s duties in the training yard were over, I was at home. And if I was home, I was drinking. I was finishing my third cup of balché, perhaps my fourth, when the knock came at my door.

He was not a popinjay today. In fact, he looked even worse than I. Gone was the perfumed, perfectly coiffed young man with that undeserved smirk of self-satisfaction. His face was drawn, his skin waxy and his eyes had a haunted look I knew well. He’d draped his cloak haphazardly about his shoulders, the knot hastily tied and lumpy. He wore a woolen tunic, but stood in my doorway shivering, even though the evening air was warm.

“Nopaltzin,” he said, his voice raspy. “I need to speak with you.”

I nodded wearily and gestured for him to enter. Closing the door, I followed him into my living room. His eyes scanned the room nervously, as if expecting to see someone. When it fell upon my sister’s loom, he shuddered and trembled.

“Go on, sit. I have just opened a fresh jar of balché. Small profit in getting drunk alone.”

Tolek nodded and slowly lowered himself to the mats. I took my own seat and poured him a goblet, before refilling my own. He took it with shaking hands. I tamped down my scorn. Although clansmen, I had never cared for the man, tolerating him for the sake of our sisters’ love for one another. Sisters we had now both lost — for reasons I alone knew.

We sat quietly for a time, then I broke the silence.

“You needed to speak to me?”

He nodded, then drank more deeply. “I…yes. I need to speak to you. About Xochimitl. About Atili. About…other things.”

My eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Do you, now?”

His eyes looked at nothing. Or at least, nothing of this world.

“Yes. Yes, I must. Nopaltzin…our sisters…their deaths…I do not believe it was bad meat. Nor even contagion spirits! It…that is, I think it was….” He drank from his cup again, shaking his head.

“What was it, cousin?”

Haunted eyes looked up into my own. “Oh gods, I think it was sorcery! Worse! It is the vengeance of the dead!”

“The dead? What dead? Who could wish those sweet women harm?” I refilled his goblet, but not my own.

“Lords of Tzatlokan have mercy, but…but it is Otzli Three-Rabbit! I…I see him, cousin. He haunts my dreams. Ever since that night, the night of your feast, he has come to me with burning eyes and a torn throat, his clawed hand pointing in accusation! I cannot close my eyes for even a moment, or he is there! Oh, gods, gods, he knows, he knows!”

“Knows what?” I struggled to keep my voice level, my sword-hand turning white-knuckled as it squeezed my goblet.

Tolek was shaking and sweat beaded his brow. “He knows that Xochimitl and I…that, that the child would not have been his! Gods he knows, and he wants revenge. But I did not slay him, Nopaltzin!”

            No, I did. For lies the three of you told. Now three people are dead, all by my hand.

“So, you took my sister to your bed, and put your seed into her belly.” I could not hide my anger now. “My sister, who was Otzli’s wife.”

“Yes, yes! It was wrong; we must have been enflamed by one of Lady Lilaké’s ill-moons. Xochimitl would have divorced Otzli, but he would not let her go. Not unless she had the backing of our clan, of her brother…”

And then I listened to words as horrible as any vision I had beheld in the Underworld. How Xochimitl, my dear, gentle Xochimitl, had sat with Atili and planned how to be rid of her husband. Toloatzin bulbs, ground into the tobacco he smoked each night before sleep would make him disoriented, suggestible and swooning. Atili would then climb into his bed and caress him, staining him with her painted lips and her perfume. My sister would enter, see them together and run from the house, weeping to have found him in another woman’s embrace. Poor, drugged Otzli would be too confused, too befuddled to know how another woman had come to his bed, let alone remember whom she was, only knowing that he was guilty of infidelity. The bruising on Xochimitl’s face? Again, the handiwork of her lover’s loyal sister.

But the women were not Siwakalpa, and they would have done well to have spoken to an herb-witch before tampering with Lord Halki’s sacred medicine-plants. His priests call toloatzin bulb the ‘Seed of Vain Imaginings’ for while it enhances intoxication, it also inflames the liver, causing wild, angry visions and blind rages. Thus, when my sister had burst into my home, bruised and weeping, to tell me of her husband’s betrayal, I had stormed off to confront him, as she knew I would. But, rather than a confused, rambling confession, Otzli had lunged at me, his eyes seeing a threat that did not exist, with lethal consequences.

“You must believe me, cousin, I knew none of this at the time! Atili, she just wished your sister and I to be happy; for our child to know its true father. She and Xochimitl acted from love!”

            Forgive…my sister had said with her death-gasps. Was she speaking to Otzli, or to me, the brother she had incited to murder?

“This happened nearly two years ago,” I said, my teeth grinding. “Xochimitl was a widow whose time of mourning had passed. You could have taken her to wife at any time. Yet you did not.”

“But don’t you see? Otzli died, and the gods took the child in retribution! It was Their justice, Their pronouncement against our sins. If I had used his death to take Xochimitl to wife, Their curse would have fallen on me…I mean, on all of us! Now they are gone, and Otzli comes for me, who never harmed him!”

            Never harmed him? He had cuckolded the man, and let his own sister plot to humiliate him, for what in the end had been a dalliance. My sister had dishonored herself, widowed herself and now faced the Underworld’s retribution for her husband’s death…for this man’s amusement.

Tolek was a handsome man, but weak in in spirit. Now, as he cracked under the strain, he showed his true self. He cared for neither Xochimitl nor Atili so much as for himself. He kept speaking, blathering justifications and denials, but a pounding in my ears made his voice seem distant. My throat dry, I refilled my cup and drank.

Gods Below, so much death.

Three deaths — four, with the unborn child — three spirits sentenced by my hand to the dwell in City of Wrath.

And still, Tolek’s excuses flowed from that soft, smirking mouth. Rationalizing. What could he do? Surely, I understood? It was horrible, for certain, but we men, we see beautiful women and…

His voice was like the winds of the Underworld howling in my ears.

Shut up. Shut up. Shut up!

He droned on, but I was no longer hearing.

Three needless deaths, their blood on my hands.

Let there be a fourth.

It was mindless instinct when I smashed my goblet into the side of Tolek’s head, sending him sprawling, but as I leapt atop him like a jaguar upon its prey, I knew full well that I would kill him. I left my dagger in its sheathe. It was the blade that had taken Otzli’s life; it was too pure a thing for Tolek. Snarling with animal fury, I balled my fist and hammered it into his face, flattening his nose and sending blood spraying. He struggled against me with those wiry limbs, but I knocked them aside, and taking his throat in my hand, pressed him to the mat. Lifting my fist high, I struck him again.

And again…

And again…
And again.

 

***

 

The Great One knows the rest.

Pachál and Marí found me kneeling beside Tolek’s cooling body, his face a shapeless ruin, my hands soaked with both his blood and my own, where I had torn my fist on broken teeth and shattered bone. I am told they tried rousing me, but in truth, I do not even recall their presence. It seems Marí ran for the watch.

They brought me here, and you shall stand in judgment. I assure the Great One that I understand the threats before me: Either taking the ‘high ride’ upon an impaling pike for murder, or strangled for sorcery, my tongue torn out, my hands cut off; buried face down so that I will never chew my way free should the Underworld reject my spirit. Gruesome, agonizing, and ignoble deaths.

I do not deny your authority, Great One, nor do I seek such horrid ends. But I cannot fear them. Not anymore. They are ephemeral: Moments, maybe hours, of suffering, and then no more. But I have beheld Kulanipolko’s walls and heard the moans of the penitents who dwell within. Penitents, such as my sister and loyal Atili, who are there even now, their spirit flesh subject to the cruel caresses of Lady Tzifonek’s minions.

Am I their murderer? Tolek’s? Or merely the hand of Otzli’s retribution?

Siwakalpa warned me not to be too quick to call upon the Kindly One’s justice; that the justice of the Underworld brings little comfort. Did my deeds earn Otzli forgiveness — or his final vengeance? His murderer become his avenger, and thereby, the weapon of his own destruction.

Perhaps it no longer matters.

It is in the Great One’s power to either release me, or to put me to death. But you cannot set me free. There are far greater punishments then those of mortal man, but the worst of all is the damnation we set ourselves. Even now, my spirit walks through the sands of my own, personal Fields of Wailing Regret. Let me live, and a parade of the wan, tormented faces of those I have condemned shall haunt my dreams forever. Send me to death, and no doubt I shall join them in their penitence.

It is said that the magistrate is a fair man. I am sure he will decide as is best.

In his place, did not I?

 

________________________________________

Gregory D. Mele has had a passion for sword & sorcery and historical fiction for most of his life.
An early love of dinosaurs led him to dragons, and from dragons…well, the rest should be
obvious. From Robin Hood to Conan, Elric to Aragorn, Captain Blood to King Arthur, if there
were swords being swung, he was probably reading it.

Since the late 90s, his passion has been the reconstruction and preservation of armizare, a martial
art developed over 600 years ago by the famed Italian master-at-arms Fiore dei Liberi, that
includes the use of the two-handed sword, spear, dagger, wrestling, poleaxe and armoured
combat. In the ensuing twenty years, he has become an internationally known teacher, researcher,
and author on the subject, via his work with the Chicago Swordplay Guild, which he founded in
1999, and Freelance Academy Press, a publisher in the fields of martial arts, arms and armour,
chivalry, historical arts and crafts.

His previous work for Heroic Fantasy Quarterly include, Servant of the Black Wind, Kamazotz, and Heart of Vengeance.

 

Justin Pfeil is an IT Guy, draws a Webcomic,  and fences with Medieval swords.  He’s an Old-School RPG player and has been married to hiswife for 22 years. Check out his website for more!