Naamah's Blessing - Jacqueline Carey [103]
After a brief exchange, the pochtecas and their porters advanced to join the warriors. Denis de Toluard beckoned to us. “Moirin!” he called. “They wish to meet you.”
“Bad idea,” Bao muttered.
I glanced down at him. “I’ll never command respect if I show myself to be a coward at the outset.”
He sighed. “You have a point.”
I rode forward slowly, Bao walking beside me. Septimus Rousse stayed behind with our porters to keep a hand on the pack-horses’ lines.
The Nahuatl eyed me with interest, but they made no move, threatening or otherwise. When I reached them, I drew rein. Bao moved a few feet away and held his staff in a deceptively casual defensive pose. My former pack-horse stood stock-still beneath me. I met the spotted warrior’s gaze impassively.
“Lady Moirin, this is the Jaguar Knight Temilotzin.” Beneath his steel helmet, rills of sweat streaked Denis de Toluard’s face, but his voice was steady. “He is in command of this expedition.”
I inclined my head a fraction. “Niltze, Temilotzin.”
The spotted warrior gave me a fierce grin and touched his brow and his chest, speaking too rapidly for me to catch more than one word in three.
“Temilotzin says that it is clear the women of Terre d’Ange are braver than the women of Aragonia, who cower on the far shores of their ocean and dare not show their faces in the Nahuatl Empire,” Denis translated for me. “He thanks you for allowing their party to precede us, since our progress is woefully slow. For our courtesy, he will put in a good word for us with the Emperor’s chief advisor.”
“Tlazocamatli, Temilotzin,” I said politely. “Tell him I am honored by his gracious words, and I thank him for his kindness.”
Denis obeyed.
The spotted warrior chuckled and repeated his gesture, touching his brow and chest, then turned to his party and issued a sharp order.
“Fall back to let them pass!” Balthasar called out.
All of us obeyed, clearing the junction. The pochtecas’ party tramped past us at what was indeed a far more efficient pace than our own.
Once the last man had passed, Bao lowered his staff to rest the butt on the ground. “Guess they weren’t hopelessly inflamed after all, huh?”
I gazed after their baggage-train as it began to dwindle in the distance. “So it seems.”
“Be glad of it,” Balthasar said wryly.
I laughed. “Believe me, I am.”
THIRTY-SIX
All told, we were ten days on the road to Tenochtitlan.
We passed—or more accurately, were passed by—one more pochteca expedition on the course of the journey, an encounter even more uneventful than the first one, for which all of us were grateful.
Although the majority of our nights were spent making camp along the roadside, we found several inns catering to travelling merchants on the way, where we were treated with an odd dispassionate curiosity.
Our path ascended subtly into the mountains, tropical warmth giving way to cooler temperatures, palm trees giving way to conifers and oaks.
The men in armor began to breathe easier, and I felt relieved on their behalf.
On the tenth day, we reached our destination. From what Denis had told us, I knew that the city of Tenochtitlan was built on a lake in a vast valley surrounded by mountains, but even so, I wasn’t prepared for the sight of it. We climbed atop the crest of the road and gazed down into the valley.
It was immense, and the city was well and truly built in the middle of the very lake. Ever the scholar, Denis explained how it had been done, expanding on one lone barren isle by creating artificial islands anchored in marshy ground that were built up and increased over many years, but I simply hadn’t imagined it could be so vast.
“Elua have mercy!” Septimus Rousse breathed in awe. “It’s nigh as grand as La Serenissima!” He gave a wry laugh. “I shouldn’t have wasted all those months cooling my heels in Orgullo del Sol the last time.”
“It’s a considerable feat of engineering,” Denis admitted. “Especially for a folk with no access to forged tools.”
Here were the enormous temples I’d heard about so long ago, stepped pyramids rising high into the