Aztecs 11 (Conclusion)

By Pueros

Chapter 11 – Settlements

(Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec Empire, 6 January 1521)

The first problem facing the young escapees was how to traverse the thoroughfares of the Aztec capital without raising suspicion, especially given their attire and the presence of two boys with strikingly unusual fair features, who might be recognised. The roads would be busy, even at this early hour, particularly with those gathering to see the spectacle in the main square. However, it was a problem that had been considered and cleverly resolved by the oldest of the four nullified acolytes. Six feathered ceremonial head-dresses had been secretly placed near the rear entrance, along with a long processional pole from which hung several skulls, multi-coloured paper streamers, six red cloth bags displaying the yellow sunburst symbol and more feathers. The headwear would hopefully hide Juan’s and Tezozo’s blonde hair and the pole should indicate six unimportant acolytes proceeding to some minor temple on the outskirts of the city to participate in some obscure ritual. As an added precaution, body paint had also been secreted and copious amounts were applied to the bodies of the sextet, primarily to disguise the former reincarnated deities’ light skin.

The boys emerged from the unguarded rear entrance of the temple and were soon advancing purposefully and, bravely in the circumstances, unhurriedly along the causeway that led north, holding the sacred pole equidistantly. Juan and Tezozo were purposely placed third and fifth in line so that they would be partially hidden, being flanked in front and behind by others.

The road was busy with many people entering Tenochtitlan from the opposite direction to see Juan and Tezozo flogged and castrated but they were to be disappointed, at least for now, as the sextet successfully made their escape. They found woodland just outside the capital in which to dump the pole and its impedimenta, with the exception of the bags because they contained food for sustenance and knives, stolen from the drunken priests, for protection. The starving Juan and Tezozo were particularly grateful to assuage their hunger without delay. The six boys then located a stream to wash off their body paint and used the knives to cut off the red flaps of their loincloths, emblazoned with the give-away yellow sunburst symbol, leaving them wearing just the sparse thong-like undercloths. No-one mentioned anything about the fact that the former gods’ remaining meagre tight garments displayed clear genital outlines whereas those of their companions did not.

The sextet debated precisely what to do as they readied themselves to further their escape. It was agreed to stick together and head north-east towards Tezozo’s people, carefully keeping to barren countryside. East towards Juan’s would be too dangerous as they would come across many Aztec troops guarding the border with Tlaxcala. West towards the conquered lands of the nullified acolytes might be equally dangerous as it was now obvious to all that Juan’s and Tezozo’s earlier attempt to escape had started in that direction and it might be where their undoubted pursuers started looking first.

Many days later, the sextet were peering down from their hiding place on an adjacent hillside observing the goings-on in Tezozo’s hometown, which was actually more a large village. The journey to the former sungod’s homeland had been tough but uneventful, apart from nocturnal activities. The boys had paired off to sleep together for warmth. Juan and Tezozo naturally wanted to resume their sexual acquaintance with each other’s bodies, a situation that did not go unnoticed by the others.

On their fifth night, the oldest of the pretty nullified acolytes approached the duo and sheepishly asked if the pairings could be mixed, eventually confessing to the reason for the request. The embarrassed blushing eunuch explained that he and his three friends now only gained sexual satisfaction through the tickling of their prostrates and could Juan and Tezozo oblige them. The two whole youngsters did and they found that sodomising the eunuchs was not an unpleasant experience, especially as the wounds in their groins were hidden by little, carefully developed, sprays of pubic hair, making them very girl-like in appearance in that area.

No Aztecs could be discerned in Tezozo’s home settlement, so it was decided to try to reach the boy’s house, a large one-storey structure of red mud brick at twilight, hoping that some of his family might have felt safe enough to return there after the conquest. The lads were not to be disappointed and Tezozo’s lachrymose reunion with his mother and younger siblings also brought tears to the eyes of his five companions. A welcome home feast was somehow quickly conjured up, over which much news was exchanged, including the revelation from his mother that Tezozo had just passed his 14th birthday.

The six escapees learned with sadness of the pillaging and raping that had taken place within the town after the Aztecs had won the battle in which Tezozo’s father had died. However, Tezozo’s family had escaped because his father had had the wisdom to pack them off to safety elsewhere. They had returned only once order had been restored to the subjugated land. Their father’s body had been burnt along with all of his slain comrades and, although the conquerors had established a nearby military encampment, the victorious Aztecs left the vassal populace largely alone as long as regular tribute, in terms of agricultural and husbandry produce, was paid. Tezozo, who had had to translate all this into Aztec for his five friends to understand what was being said, now conveyed his own experiences to his appalled and deeply concerned but nevertheless intrigued family.

It was eventually time for all to sleep but Tezozo did not do so with either his best friend or any of his other four companions for his young similarly aged wife, now a member of his family, was present. He had to spend the night with her and, despite his natural tendencies, he managed to perform his conjugal duties. Accommodation within the household was found for all the visitors, who spent their first comfortable nights for many a day.

The next morning saw the four nullified former acolytes set off, after many hugs, on their way back to their own homelands, freshly attired in more substantial and warmer clothing and appropriately re-provisioned. They would aim to head west then south to achieve their destination. Juan, in particular, never heard of them again and therefore presumed that they had reached safety for he would have come to learn of their horrible demise if they had been recaptured.

Juan decided to stay with Tezozo and his family for a few days before making his own departure, wanting to experience his friend’s beautiful body a few more times before presumably having to give its delights up for ever. He succeeded in this aim and a sad Tezozo was guiding an equally sad Juan to the southern perimeter of his hometown at dawn, intending to show him a route that would lead him safely past the military encampment, when the community was invaded on all sides by Aztec soldiers.

The Emperor and High Priest had been furious at Juan’s and Tezozo’s second disappearance, this time apparently with four acolytes. After horribly sacrificing some priests given blame for allowing the escape, they identified Tezozo’s origin and sent a message to order the local Aztec commander to raid the evil one’s hometown to see if he had fled there. The boys were taken by surprise and spotted, their identities immediately recognisable by their blonde hair and fair complexions. However, Tezozo knew his town better than their pursuers and by judicious use of narrow alleys and scrambling over walls to cross some back yards, the two friends found themselves in open countryside.

Nevertheless, the numerous Aztecs were on both their flanks and at their rear, making only one route of escape possible. This led up a sharp escarpment on the other side of which, as Tezozo well knew, was a steep gorge, with only one navigable path. The boys were fast runners but some of the chasing soldiers were quicker and they began to gain on the impostor gods.

Juan and Tezozo were almost at the top of the incline when the latter tripped. The former did not know his friend’s fate until he had reached the summit and glanced back to see Tezozo overwhelmed by warriors. Juan hesitated, not knowing what to do. His delay was almost fatal as an approaching Aztec hurled a spear at him, hoping to slow not kill the boy. However, the impact of the weapon, as it struck the lad’s right thigh, caused him to topple over the edge into the deep gorge. When the soldiers reached the summit themselves, Juan was nowhere to be seen, presumably falling to his death. They therefore had to content themselves with the recapture of one evildoer.

Whilst his family fled, being in great danger for harbouring the false deity, Tezozo was stripped naked and suspended face-up from a horizontal pole, which would be carried by a relay of heavily guarded soldiers on the long journey back to Tenochtitlan. By the time of the boy’s return to the capital for settlement of his evil account, his wrists and ankles had been badly bitten into by the twine enforcing his unrelenting bondage. However, this did not matter as surely now he would not escape the horrific penal sacrifice due.

The day after Tezozo’s recapture, with the reappearance of normality, some of his compatriots decided to try to find Juan’s body, wanting to give an enemy of their enemy appropriate funereal rites. They knew the gorge well and carefully scoured the area for the dead boy but no trace of him was found. They therefore turned their eyes to the cliff-face, close inspection revealing a young body on a high ledge, seemingly prevented from falling further by some shrubbery that grew all over the tall sides of the gorge. Expert climbers were later sent to recover the corpse, only to find that they were rescuing someone miraculously still alive, although breathing very shallowly. After the spear had been pulled from the lad’s thigh and the resultant flow of blood stemmed, twine ropes were lowered to help bring the badly hurt young Spaniard back to the summit, from where he was smuggled into the sanctuary of one of his saviour’s townhouses.

It would be over a week before Juan regained consciousness and the fever caused by his wounds did not relent for another week. He emerged from his delirium to find that he could not go in pursuit of his friend because he could not walk. The thigh injury and a broken bone in his leg would need a further six weeks’ convalescence before he could regain his feet, by which time news of Tezozo’s fate had reached his hometown. It was another week before Juan was composed enough to leave to seek revenge.

The naked bound and distraught Tezozo had been led by many priests through the jeering crowds in the main square of Tenochtitlan to the sacrificial platform, now only furnished with two stakes. The boy, whose mouth and anus were very sore after again accommodating the cocks of those who had recaptured him, was bound by his red-raw wrists and ankles between the posts, spreadeagled and facing the temple whence he had just emerged. However, he would not have to endure the buckets of urine again. Instead, the 14 years old was to embark on day one of a now nine day sacrificial process.

To loud cheering from the assembled throng, a young heavily built priest mounted the platform holding three whips. He placed all but one on the floor and, at a signal from the High Priest, standing adjacent to the Emperor on the temple steps, he began to flog the impostor god’s back. This produced much screaming from the penal sacrificial victim, whose soft cock increased in size and became first horizontal and then vertical as the flagellation gradually proceeded with great deliberation, the recipient being required to appreciate fully every blow.

After turning Tezozo’s back into a mishmash of bloody stripes, the priest moved to concentrate on duplicating the same pattern on the boy’s buttocks and rear legs before moving to the front. He then changed to a lighter whip, as he did not want to cause fatal damage to the lad’s bone structure. He reverted to a leather crop when, all other areas except the head having been attended to, it was eventually time to give the false deity’s genitals some focus. A stream of white fluid spurted from the hard ivory-like penis, which had been drooling precum for a while, as the first stroke of the leather hit the cockhead.

Tezozo had to be awakened from faints on three occasions during his two-hour ordeal. He was then left to enjoy his agony and the crowd’s insults for another hour until his red-striped ball sac was tied extremely tightly round the base with thin leather cord, cutting off the blood supply. The death of the boy’s testicles would take several excruciating hours, during which time the colour of his scrotum would pass through several dark hues until attaining a deep blackness. The cord would not be removed from the castrated lad until he was completely emasculated four days later, by which time he had also lost his tongue, teeth, fingers, toes, ears and nose.

The aged priest, appointed to oversee Juan’s and Tezozo’s survival to the very end on the previous unexpectedly cancelled penal sacrificial occasion, had been happy to return to perform the same duty to the evil one who remained alive, albeit not for long. The old man carefully supervised every facet of the boy’s dismemberment and was very good at his work.

Tezozo’s constant agony had become an almost natural feeling within his mind as, on his final day of life, the now blind and limb-less lad’s almost unrecognisable torso was flayed, although the skin would not make a very good cover for its drum as it had so many bloody whip-marks. The boy’s penultimate thought, as he felt his ribcage being parted to gain access to his barely beating heart, was of standing next to his father in the battle that had led to his original capture. His last thought was of looking forward to standing next to his father again soon but in paradise and hoped that his friend Juan, whom he thought dead, would be there too.

Juan managed to rejoin Cortes and the Conquistadors in Tlaxcala and was very active, now as a 15 years old, when the Spaniards and their allies triumphantly entered Tenochtitlan in May 1521, effectively bringing the Aztec civilisation to an end. Mounted on a horse, rather than his previous pony, the boy fought like a demon alongside the men, gaining sanguine revenge for his friend by killing many enemy soldiers. He was helped by the warriors’ terror of his horse as none had ever seen such an animal before the arrival of the Spaniards the previous year. When the Aztecs had first observed mounted horsemen, they had considered human and creature to be one horrible two-headed beast and they had never lost their dread.

Juan had deliberately been one of the first invaders to arrive at the main temple. He found the High Priest about to kill another young Tlaxcalan captive on the altar plinth in a desperate sacrificial effort to encourage the gods to stave off the white men from the east. The priests restraining the victim fled on seeing the heavily bloodstained young demon holding a sword, its long blade red rather than silver in colour. It would be the High Priest’s heart that would now stop beating and not that of the designated offering.

Juan subsequently became rich through helping his comrades plunder the many temples of the capital and elsewhere, considering it further appropriate retribution and ultimately final settlement for what the religious order had done to Tezozo. He later returned to Tezono’s hometown to give further thanks for his own survival and deliver substantial and very appropriate associated largesse. He discovered that, after the flight of the Aztecs, Tezozo’s family had felt safe enough to reoccupy their house, where his friend’s young widow had given birth to a son. The young Spaniard immediately proposed marriage to the girl.

Juan eventually became deeply disillusioned with the Conquistadors and all their works. He was especially galled at the sight of many Aztecs being burnt at the stake, under the supervision of priests from his own Church, for refusing to convert to Christianity. He believed that the actions of his fellow Catholics were even more morally repugnant than those of the original rulers of this land. The Aztec liturgy had, after all, truly believed in the sanctity of sacrifice as a passageway to paradise whereas the awful actions of the Christian priests went completely against Jesus’ teachings.

Juan, his wife, toddler Tezozo and baby Juan, both children bearing their respective fathers’ fair features, therefore boarded a ship ferrying a group of more humanistic pioneers north to develop a new peaceful Spanish settlement in eastern Florida.

(Florida, U.S.A., 7 January 2002)

Juan and Tez, short for Tezozo, were again sat in front of the former’s new computer. Juan opened his e-mail inbox to see whether he had received a reply from Pueros, author of ‘Aztecs’, to his enquiry. He had and so opened the message, which read:-

“Dear Juan,

I was very surprised to receive your e-mail as I assure you that I did not know of your existence or that of Tez. I’m sure that no-one will find out your surnames or where precisely you live and I promise not to refer to you again after ‘Aztecs’ is concluded. I just thought that I was using a smart literary device when bringing my story forward to 2002 in chapter 10 and describing some boys having fun. I’m astonished that what I depicted actually happened. I also believed that I had invented, in your 16th century namesakes, fictional characters to set against a true historical background. I’m now forced to reappraise my view, wondering instead whether your e-mail actually confirms that the whole tale was planted in my mind by two friends, together in paradise, who wanted their histories recorded!

Yours sincerely,

Pueros.”

THE END

of

AZTECS

by Pueros