PREVIOUSLY.
["Prepare a company of one hundred chosen men! They shall shun the main road, bypassing the Suaza structure further south under the cover of night, and strike directly at the nearest settlement east of their supply line. Raze their food stores, put the civilians to the sword to break their spirit, and return with the greatest number of captives for sacrifice. War is waged on the front lines, not lurking behind walls!"
The command swept through the Mexica camp like a gust of fresh air—a return to the proven tactics of assault and terror. Cuitláhuac, though wary of Suaza technology, had opted for an offensive rooted in maneuver and flanking, assuring his host that the Triple Alliance still possessed the guile to overcome stone and metal.]
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Year 12 of the SuaChie Calendar.
Cuitláhuac's orders had been concise, a reflection of his faith in the superiority of maneuver over Suaza technology. There, west of the Southern Fort, at the Mexica watchpost, his words had resonated like an infallible design.
A few hours later.
One hundred chosen Mexica warriors moved stealthily eastward, divided into two columns of fifty men each, led by two minor generals. Their mission: to bypass the southernmost Suaza fortress and strike the supply villages that Cuitláhuac deemed vulnerable.
[The Northern Flank]
The minor general in charge of the northern flank was a young man named Tlapaltecatl, marked by a scar across his left eye that lent him an air of hardened resolve. His column had veered slightly north, skirting the most rugged reaches of the Sierra, making their advance technically the most arduous.
Nevertheless, the warriors—armed with their traditional obsidian macuahuitls and fire-hardened wooden spears—were in a frenzy. The prospect of blood and, above all, the riches of the Suaza Kingdom fueled their fervor. Their captains were forced to rebuke them constantly to maintain formation and silence.
"Be silent, Xochitl! Do you wish the 'turtles' to hear us before we can seize their jewels?" a captain whispered, tapping his subordinate's shoulder lightly with his buckler.
Xochitl, a brawny warrior, swallowed hard, his eyes gleaming in the forest's gloom. "I think only of the fabrics, Captain. I have been told they possess cloth as soft as cotton, such as only the Tlatoani Moctezuma wears, yet there, even the merchants drape themselves in it."
Another warrior chimed in softly, "I wish to taste that swine flesh. They say the teponaztli… no, the 'sacred meat' of the Suaza Kingdom is sweet and succulent. And the gold. So much gold! They say the Friendly Sea City. is paved with it."
Tlapaltecatl, the minor general, listened in silence. He himself had visited the Friendly Sea City. in times of peace, under the guise of trade. He remembered docks teeming not with canoes, but with great triple-masted ships; stone streets so smooth one could run without stumbling; and the vibrant hum of commerce.
He had seen the wares: jewels that sparkled like trapped stars, metal tools harder than copper, and the sheer immensity of the Suaza edifices. His superiors had promised that if they conquered, all these riches would be theirs. The war was not fought solely for the glory of Huitzilopochtli; it was for the opulence of this new kingdom of the south.
After a few minutes of tense advance, Tlapaltecatl raised a hand, halting the column. He had noticed something discordant in the layout of the nearby woods. It was not a new fortress, but a pattern of systematic clearing.
"Runners, forward and scout. The land has changed. There is something new."
Upon their return, the runners gasped as they announced their discovery. "General… it is a road. No animal track, this. It is wide and smooth, running from the northern fortress to the southern one. But there are no Suaza patrols nearby."
The news stirred a hushed commotion. A connecting road between the two strongholds. Their scouts had failed to detect the construction of this logistical artery. It meant the Suaza were not as isolated as Cuitláhuac had believed.
Despite the surprise, Tlapaltecatl felt a surge of relief. If the road sat there untended, it meant Cuitláhuac's flanking blow remained viable.
"Silence! We cross quickly. Swift and silent!"
It was the first time a Mexica military unit had crossed that line of connection, and the fact they went undetected ignited an inner fire within the warriors. They had done it; they had pierced the defense of the fortresses.
As they pressed eastward, however, their euphoria began to wane, replaced by disappointment. They had expected an ambush, a clash worthy of their station. But they encountered nothing but silence. The general, though still wary, also began to grow overconfident, allowing the narrative of his superiors—that the Suaza were cowards hiding behind stone—to take hold.
Finally, a kilometer from what would be the Suaza settlement, the terrain shifted. The forest opened into a plain, and in the stretches nearing the village, Tlapaltecatl could discern covered rows and trenches: traps similar to those guarding the fortresses. The plain, which appeared to be an ideal killing field for an assault, was in truth a minefield of Suaza engineering. There were no walls, much to the general's relief, but the approach would be slow and perilous.
They resolved to wait until near nightfall to strike. Tlapaltecatl ordered temporary encampments at the forest's edge, setting patrols and watches. Just as he prepared to rest, he looked toward the village and noticed something.
Atop what seemed to be the tallest building in the town, there was a rapid flash, then another. It was no reflection of the setting sun. These were sequential flashes, cold and geometric. Tlapaltecatl frowned.
[A/N: Sniper, get down! Or so they would say in these times. Hahaha]
He dismissed the anomaly: it had to be a reflection from glass or some abandoned trinket. He did not know that one of those glints was a light signal—an advanced heliographic mirror communicating the presence of the hundred warriors to the Southern Fortress. Another was the flash of a spyglass that had already marked their position.
[The Southern Flank]
While Tlapaltecatl made camp, the southern flank, led by a more seasoned general named Xipilli, also pressed eastward. Their route was more familiar, for the village they sought had once been a waystation toward the Friendly Sea City.
Consequently, this group had been favored with the finest equipment: they carried no classic obsidian weapons, but rather metal swords and knives purchased from the Suaza, or their own weapons retrofitted with bronze and copper by the Triple Alliance's new metal-shapers.
Xipilli, unlike Tlapaltecatl, was prudent—a lesson hard-won from recent wars with the Tlaxcaltecs, where arrogance always cost more than caution.
After traversing several kilometers, Xipilli ordered a scout of the ancient road leading to the village. Upon their return, the scouts delivered their warning.
"General, there are Suaza patrols. And we saw one of their warriors… mounted upon the Beast!"
The mention of the horse—the mythic war-animal of the Suaza Kingdom—was enough. Xipilli chose the path of prudence, just as Cuitláhuac had instructed. He delved deeper south, skirting the thick forest and avoiding the old road. He would not risk a head-on confrontation with the horse.
After a few hours, south of the Suaza village, Xipilli ordered a rest. Their plan mirrored that of their northern counterparts: to strike from the south of the town at dusk, when light and shadow would be their allies.
One hour later.
The company divided into five squads of ten warriors. They set out stealthily toward the village, moving through the undergrowth.
As they advanced, they noticed strange whistling sounds emanating from the settlement. They were intermittent and shrill. Some attributed them to birds, but the more knowledgeable among the captains understood the sound was artificial. These were alarm signals, scouts' calls. Matters were not unfolding as they had desired.
The worst occurred a mere hundred meters from the village. All fell into a terrifying stillness; nature itself went mute. The only sound reaching them was the dull, rhythmic thrumming of war drums from the center of the town. These were not Mexica drums; they were Suaza drums—deeper, more measured.
One of the captains, a man experienced in the hunt named Tlacapan, halted and signaled to Xipilli to alert him. Something was wrong; the silence was too unnatural.
In that very instant, within Tlacapan's narrow field of vision, a figure appeared that froze his blood.
He saw a Suaza warrior. Not a sentry on foot, but a man astride a horse, approaching silently from the right flank across the plain they had believed secure.
Tlacapan tried to cry out, but panic withered his throat. The rest of the men had paralyzed, their gaze fixed upon the unknown beast, trembling. The captain could not fathom how they had not noticed sooner; the sound of hooves must have been muffled by something, or perhaps the drums had swallowed the sound of its tread. But it was far too late for regrets.
Time slowed. The captain, as if in slow motion, saw the reddish glow of the setting sun illuminate the bronze tip of the lance borne by the Suaza rider. The warrior did not scream nor hurl insults; he was a figure of metal and leather in lethal motion.
Tlacapan felt only a fleeting pang of pain. The world seemed to spin violently, dissolving into a blur of earth, red sky, and the leg of a horse, until he slipped into total darkness.
Cuitláhuac's offensive, designed to punish the supposed weakness of the Suaza rearguard, had crashed violently against the elite cavalry and the intellect of the Suaza Rangers.
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Horror has a very specific way of manifesting when the unknown strikes reality.
For Xipilli and the three captains who still stood with him, Captain Tlacapan's fate was not merely a military loss; it was a ghastly revelation. They had been alert, mindful of every snapping twig and the strange whistles tearing through the air, but what they had just witnessed defied all expectation.
They had never fought against riders. In their minds, a man's speed was limited by his own legs; the notion of a half-ton beast charging with the force of a thunderbolt was something their ambush tactics could not fathom. Yet, it was not merely the speed that paralyzed them; it was the gleam of the weapon.
Mexica swords, with their beautiful but brittle obsidian edges, were effective for causing deep bleeding and incapacitating wounds. But the rider's silver weapon—a blend of iron with tempered steel edges—did not merely cut; it reaped.
The warriors who had survived the initial charge against Tlacapan's group were in a state of shock. They had seen steel shear through pressed cotton armor and bone with the same ease a knife enters ripe fruit. A comrade's head had rolled upon the ground before the body even registered the impact. The rider had entered, sown chaos, and vanished in a breath, leaving them staring terrified into the gloom.
Xipilli, swallowing the fear that threatened to seize his throat, reacted with a veteran's haste. "Regroup!" he roared at the leaderless warriors. "Do not stand there dazed! Toward the village, now!"
He still clung to a sliver of hope. If they could reach the buildings, the horse would lose its advantage of mobility. Xipilli guided the groups along a different path than the rider had taken, traversing several meters of brush before emerging onto one of the settlement's main streets. The warriors advanced with a toxic cocktail of fear and rage, clutching their weapons with white knuckles.
They made for the nearest houses. Some had their doors flung wide, inviting plunder; others remained hermetically sealed. The Mexica burst into the open dwellings hoping for a quick theft to steady their nerves, but they found only emptiness. There were embers still warm in the hearths and plates with remnants of food—clear signs of recent occupation—but not a soul to be found.
"Leave that!" a captain rebuked a warrior attempting to seize a fine blanket. "It is a trap. They knew we were coming."
The recent abandonment put them even further on edge. They attempted to storm the closed houses, but met an unexpected barrier: the doors were of thick, sturdy timber, reinforced with bronze fittings that withstood the brunt of their shoulders. Some tried to shatter the glass windows—a material they considered a precious jewel—but only succeeded in cutting their hands deeply on the jagged shards, recoiling with groans of pain.
Xipilli halted in the middle of the street, spinning around. There were no warriors in the streets. No civilians pleading for mercy. The silence of the town was more terrifying than the din of battle.
"Where are they?" he whispered to himself.
He saw one of his men manage to slip through the frame of a window where the wood had given way, but no sooner had his head entered than a flash of bronze erupted from the darkness within. The warrior fell back, his throat severed by a blade. They knew not if these were civilians defending their hearth or Suaza soldiers ambushing them.
Then, the news arrived that broke Xipilli's morale. A sentry from the rearguard came sprinting, his face ashen.
"General! The path back to the forest, to the south… there are two horses. They have cut off our escape."
A glacial chill washed over Xipilli. He had expected a counterattack from the town center, not to be hunted from without like rabbits in a pen. The Suaza tactic was so alien, so removed from the quest for captives for sacrifice, that he knew not how to proceed. Everything suggested the objective was not to fight, but to annihilate.
Xipilli felt the air growing heavy. The darkness of dusk began to devour all color. They tried to press toward the town center, but the horses that had been lurking at their rear began to trot toward them, their hooves clattering against the hardened earth with a cadence that chilled the blood.
"This way!" Xipilli shouted, guiding them toward the eastern path, seeking a side exit.
However, they were met by a barrier of overturned carts and wooden beams blocking the way. Frustrated, he turned north. But just as he was about to order the charge, an electric tingle raced down his spine. It was that instinct forged in a thousand battles—the sixth sense of a warrior who knows when death is leveled at his chest.
"Down!" Xipilli bellowed, throwing himself to the earth.
A deafening roar, as if the heavens themselves had split in two, shook the village. The ears of the Mexica rang violently, leaving them disoriented. Those who kept their eyes forward saw a blinding flash erupting from the darkness of the northern street.
Seconds later, the silence was replaced by screams of pure agony. A captain and five warriors had collapsed. Despite the gloom, Xipilli could see the carnage: the bodies bore large, ragged, bleeding holes that no known arrow or spear could have wrought. It was as if invisible shards of metal had pierced their cotton and leather protections as though they were paper.
None understood what had happened, but an ancestral fear of the supernatural seized them. The thought was unanimous: if we stay on this path, we die.
Then, a powerful and authoritative voice resonated from the darkness of the northern road, speaking in perfect Nahuatl, though with a strange accent: "Begone, Mexica! If you do not leave at once, the thunder of the gods shall roar against you again. This soil does not belong to you!"
Xipilli rose slowly, his hands trembling. He looked at one of his wounded captains; the man had a hole the size of an orange in his stomach. Blood surged in torrents, and his hands tried in vain to hold back his viscera. There was no cure for this. There was no honor in dying against an enemy that hurled lightning from the shadows.
"It is a trap…," Xipilli gasped. "They have tracked us from the very first moment."
The minor Mexica general understood that the "weakness" Cuitláhuac believed he had found was, in reality, a gaping maw waiting to be fed with their lives. Suaza technology was not merely steel and horses; it was an intellectual superiority that treated them like prey in an experiment.
"Retreat!" Xipilli ordered, his voice breaking. "To the west! Back to the main road!"
There was no formation, no discipline in their flight. The Mexica warriors—the fiercest of the Triple Alliance—bolted without looking back. Xipilli wished to take the wounded, but the terror of the next "thunder" was too great.
They left their comrades screaming in the dark as they fled toward the forest, pursued by the echo of Suaza drums and the mental image of a weapon that spat fire and death.
Cuitláhuac had sent a hundred men to prove that Mexica guile surpassed stone. That night, only fear would return.
[A few minutes earlier, at the northern battlefield.]
While the Mexica group hid fruitlessly in the distance, upon the roof of the tallest administrative building, a Suaza Lieutenant adjusted his spyglass. He was a man of Muisca descent, with a serene face and analytical eyes. Beside him, his men waited with a discipline that stood in stark contrast to the Mexica frenzy.
"Any response from the forts?" the Lieutenant asked, never taking his eyes off the forest where the second group of invaders moved.
"No smoke signals or mirror flashes from the main forts yet, my Lieutenant," a subordinate replied. "But according to the protocol established by the Young Chuta, reinforcements will not be long. The relay system must already be in motion."
The Lieutenant nodded, though a furrow of concern marked his brow.
The majority of civilians were safe in reinforced basements and hermetic houses, but the weight of responsibility was heavy. Their settlement was small; they had only one rider available at that moment and a handful of foot soldiers equipped with full armor.
"Sixty Mexica warriors in this sector…," he murmured. "Too many for a direct engagement in the streets without suffering casualties."
The Lieutenant hesitated no longer. The doctrine of the Suaza Kingdom, imbued with Chuta's knowledge, prioritized the preservation of its citizens' lives over the honor of the melee.
"Initiate the combined distraction," he commanded. "Have the rider harry them from the rear and the archers fire from the rooftops. And if that does not stop them… prepare the Juracán (cannon) on the eastern street and distribute the Gataza (harquebuses) to all soldiers."
"Sir," a soldier cautioned. "The use of tactical gunpowder weapons is limited by decree to prevent the enemy from learning their nature too quickly."
The Lieutenant looked at the soldier with solemnity, but not with displeasure, at the reminder.
"It is true… But remember what the Young Chuta and the priests have taught us: every life of our fellow citizens is a sacred treasure. I will not lose a single man to save ammunition or maintain a secret. We shall protect this soil with the thunder if necessary."
The atmosphere turned solemn. The Suaza soldiers sought no individual glory, nor hearts for a hungry god; they sought to protect the order and the future that their "Son of Heaven" had promised them.
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[A/N: CHAPTER COMPLETED
Hello everyone.
I apologize for the delay again, but besides having a few minor problems, I had to review the scene several times.
By the way, this doesn't pick up right where the previous one left off, but rather continues from the orders given at the Mexica camp. I added the ending of the previous chapter just to avoid leaving the tense situation of Chuta with the baby kidnapped by the Mexica unresolved.
I'd like to hear what you think of the battles (there weren't many, but something is better than nothing) and the staging. I was trying to be quite descriptive but also fast-paced in narrating the situation.
And yes... there were firearms, although I didn't want them to be, but it was Chuta's order. Hahaha
By the way, just to clarify: The first part, from the Mexica perspective, takes place at the South Fort. While the Suaza perspective takes place at the North Fort.
What happens at Fort North will be very different from what happened at Fort South.
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Read my other novels.
#The Walking Dead: Vision of the Future (Chapter 91)
#The Walking Dead: Emily's Metamorphosis (Chapter 34) (INTERMITTENT)
#The Walking Dead: Patient 0 - Lyra File (Chapter 14) (INTERMITTENT)
You can find them on my profile.]