We were scheduled to meet Pinga de Cerdo with a party of men, horses, and supplies on the road to Tenochtitlan. He had a band of mercenary moors with him, disgruntled deserters from Boabdil's guard. Old grizzled Saracens who didn't give a damn who they fought for or who they killed as long as they could taste blood every day and get their fill of wine and women. They were like the rest of us that way. Pinga de Cerdo had been campaigning through the jungles for years and had more or less cleared out all the villages on the way to the Tenochtitlan, but he'd met with a horde of particularly recalcitrant natives in the last few weeks and had pretty much exhausted his supplies and decimated his ranks putting them down. The fighting was so fierce that his men began to take it personally and had taken to skinning their enemies and wearing the skins as some kind of grisly cape. At least that's what I'd heard from Cebolla, who'd run into them while cutting through the jungle on a personal treasure hunt for a young native girl to suit his peculiar taste for dwarves. He had not been successful.

Beso Negro and I were leading a pack of novices. He had acquired his name because of a particular talent that made him a huge hit among the daughters and wives of the nobility. Among men he was known as the devisor and executor of exquisite methods of torture. He had even done consulting work for the Inquisition.

Cebolla had joined up with us on the coast, where he'd wanted to flag down a ship to take him home.

"I'm disgusted with this whole business," he said, but when we told him we were finally going to take those fuckers for everything they had, he reconsidered and signed on for another tour.

I could sympathize with Cebolla. I was sick of it all myself, but I didn't really have anything to go back to except for a bunch of stupid sheep and my senile old dad who called me Hernando, the name of his older brother who used to pound the shit out of him when they were kids. No way I was going home to that. Anyway, I'd set out for fame and fortune, and at that point I'd have settled for some minor variation of one or the other, but to come back empty-handed would just be pathetic.

When we met up with Cebolla, I was propped above the marshes on my helmet, eating roast pork out of my cuirass and throwing the fat to one of the Taino slaves. Those poor bastards ate insects and dirt and whatever else they could get their hands on, and they usually died after a few day's march, so I figured I could keep a couple of them breathing with whatever scraps I could afford to toss their way. On board the ship, some dumbass had thrown a load of rotten meat overboard before we could stop him. We would've at least had the options of either dying of starvation or being eaten inside-out by worms. Anyway, we ran said dumbass through and let the Tainos cook and eat him. I caught a few of our guys sneaking bites, but in times like that, it's best just to look the other way.

So, I was leisurely picking my teeth with a dagger when Cebolla crawled through the groundcover, hauling a cowhide sack behind him. He was a filthy mess, and I first took him for one of the giant feathered snakes that had devoured several of our scouting parties, but he started yelling some incomprehensible nonsense that sounded more or less human. We hauled him out of the jungle and shook him until he started making sense. Turns out he had some fantastic story about cliffs made of gold guarded by some kind of giant humming bird. His sack was full of dried-up human hearts, which he said he'd found littering the outskirts of Tenochtitlan and used to keep the feathered snakes off his trail.

Beso Negro didn't believe a word of it and thought Cebolla had heat rot or jungle nuts or something and had gone on a homicidal rampage. Beso Negro wanted to break Cebolla's legs and hang him by his ankles from the nearest tree, but I figured he'd be useful as a guide if he wasn't totally deranged. I had fought with him at Cadiz, at Grenada, and together we'd slaughtered countless hordes of naked savages on the shores of countless islands. I knew he could be trusted. We started off into the jungle with Cebolla in the lead, swinging a machete that, every few minutes, hacked into a frog or snake and sent little spurts of blood flying in every direction.

We had some idea what awaited us at Tenochtitlan, even though no one had heard shit from that swaggering Cortes since he'd landed. We all figured he was dead. I guess it was somewhere around Jalapa that things finally got interesting. There'd been no sign of Pinga de Cerdo's men, or of any bands of natives, hostile or otherwise. I could sense the men getting restless. They wanted to kill something—anything, and some had already drawn their swords and were warily eying each other.

"Maybe we should get a couple hunting parties together," I mumbled to Beso Negro. "Re-up our meat supply, give these guys something to do."

"Yeah," he said, "I'm starting to feel the itch myself."

"You've always got the itch," I said, "You never take a break. You need a hobby or something."

"Killing is my hobby. Well, killing and getting laid. That's pretty relaxing."

"You're a pig," I said.

"You just don't have the balls for this shit anymore," said Beso Negro. "C'mon, man, where's the fire? You've lost it, brother."

He smiled and showed a row of mossy stained teeth through his curly black beard.

He was right. I wanted to get the hell out already, like Cebolla. It had gotten so I even missed those stupid sheep.

Beso Negro turned around to face the men and raised his arms.

"Gentlemen, I'd like a single file line."

The men lined up, and he had them count off alternately "1" and "2." When the parties stood clustered in two groups, it was decided that Cebolla and I would lead group one and Beso Negro would take two. The men were readying crossbows, hatchets, machetes, barbed spears, and makeshift fishing rods. Then we were off.

"Hey, Cebolla," I yelled as we pounded through the jungle, dropping parrots and macaws. One of the men had a half-killed alligator dragged behind him on a rope.

"What's up?"

"What's this about a giant humming bird? Were you making that shit up or what?"

He stopped and turned around and stared me dead in the eye.

"Man, you couldn't imagine the kind of things I've seen."

I thought he was just being dramatic, but I didn't press.

Things were going fine for a while. All we'd have to do to get back to Beso Negro's party was follow the trail of blood. It was exhilarating and in the moment seemed like just the thing to cure our spreading disaffection. The last thing we expected, after what we'd heard of Pinga de Cerdo, was to find a village intact. But there it was, pristine in the center of a clearing. I held up my hand to silence the men gathering behind me. Some dumbfuck commander had missed a prime spoil. I couldn’t even remember how long it had been since I’d seen such quality.

Bare-breasted women shuffling here and there with woven baskets balanced on their heads. Little painted native men strolling past the huts, deep in deliberation. Dusky naked children rolling in the dirt, wrestling or fighting over stone-age trinkets. Wizened hags nodding off on their feet. In the middle of this scene, a thick dwarfish girl turned, seemed to see us through the jungle cover, seemed to turn again and shout something inaudible. I met Cebolla’s eyes and saw the embers of the old flame we had lit on countless battlefields.

The metal of our armor clashed a brief, clanging alarm as we embraced, then gave the signal to charge.