The Alpha Ch. 02

I silently pulled myself up out of the water onto the southernmost causeway, followed by Jen, Courtney and hundreds of silent Eagle warriors. The western and northern causeways were being simultaneously attacked by teams led by Will and Dante respectively. The Eagle warriors silently crept among the sleeping conquistadors as they worked in two-man teams; the first to hold the sleeping spaniard's wrists while the second quietly strangled the man with a maguey fiber garrote. In ten minutes all of the spaniards were had been quietly killed except the hogtied artillerymen so I immediately set about making preparations to counter Cortes' tactical reaction, finally grateful for the weapons and tactical training that my mother had instilled in me during my lifetime.

The men had just finished their preparations when torches waved across the water on each of the other two causeways, signaling that Will and Dante's detachments were ready and in position.

The Spanish artillerymen were forced to prepare the cannons that I had ordered removed from the four ships that had been docked on either side of the causeway as well as four of the six cannons that the Spaniards had been forced to abandon in their initial flight from Tenochtitlan, the remaining two being split between Will and Dante's units. The battery of cannons was now pointing directly at the town that housed the thousands of native Spanish allies near the entrance of my causeway while Will and Dante did the same with the towns at the ends of their causeways (which likewise held thousands of native warriors whose leaders had aligned themselves with Cortes). My plan was to open fire on the villages with the Spanish cannons not in an attempt to kill them all but rather an attempt to trick them into thinking that Cortes and his conquistadors had turned on them, inducing them to abandon the siege to flee home in anger and fear at the betrayal. Surrounded, outnumbered and outgunned, I knew my hungry and tired Aztec warriors would be hard pressed to break the siege if the twenty thousand native warriors in each village were allowed to join battle. Without them, Cortes' only native allies would be the faction that followed the pro-Spanish King inside the city of Texcoco across the lake, where the Spanish leader had established his headquarters.

On my signal, all eight cannons fired their six and eight pound cast iron cannonballs towards the town that guarded the entrance of the causeway while Dante and Will ordered their smaller five-gun batteries to open fire at the enemy-occupied towns at the entrance to their respective causeways. The iron cannonballs smashed through stone, baked clay and wood to rudely raise the traitorous Mexica warriors from their slumber. Cries of alarm, pain and death erupted from the town as the artillerymen quickly reloaded their cannon and then fired another volley. Eagle warriors who had disguised themselves as warriors from Texacatl and stealthily snuck into the towns began holler and yell that the Spanish had betrayed them and Cortes and his conquistadors were attacking them. As I had hoped, the confused and terrified enemy began to stream out of all three towns in an effort to escape. I ordered a third volley fired into the tightly packed mass of fleeing men and with that they descended fully into mad panic, trampling hundreds of their comrades in an effort to escape the area.

Within minutes of the third volley, Cortes responded as I had anticipated. Knowing that to return to Cuba without a resounding victory, he would be arrested as a criminal by the Spanish Crown but to return victorious would make him a hero, Cortes refused to retreat. He deployed his remaining four hundred conquistadors along what I could only estimate to be around eight thousand of Texcoco's warriors, no doubt those belonging to the faction of the Spanish puppet King. Cortes had piled four cannons and eighty conquistadors onto his flagship, the last remaining Spanish brigantine on the lake, while his remaining eighty armored cavalry were no doubt riding around the lake to attack the causeway from it's land side. The remainder of the enemy host, comprising the majority of the Spanish infantry and all of the eight thousand native troops, crossed the lake in hundreds upon hundreds of canoes, known as acalis. The acalis were constructed in various sizes, carrying anywhere from six to one hundred men each, but most were built to carry around twenty warriors into battle.

Of the remaining conquistadors only a few dozen of them were armed with a primitive matchlock musket, known as an arquebus, while a slightly larger number possessed crossbows. Most were armed with the Spanish 'side sword', or Espada Ropera, which was essentially a rapier-longsword hybrid with a long, straight blade 1.5"-2" wide that combined the best of both it's parents. For protection they had a small buckler shield as well as their signature helmets and breastplates of munitions grade steel. The horsemen were more heavily armored in three quarter plate, covering them from head to thigh in steel and bore lances as well swords.

On the other side was the depleted but freshly inspired elite warrior units of the Aztec army. Aztec swords were made from wood and obsidian and despite their seemingly primitive design they were capable of decapitating a horse in a single strong swing. The sword, known as a Macuahuitl, looked like a flattened baseball bat, or a cricket bat, that had prismatic obsidian razor blades embedded with bitumen adhesive in a narrow trench along both sides, forming a single continuous edge that was sharper than any steel. The Aztec spear, known as the Tepoztopilli, was constructed in the same manner: a solid hardwood spear with a leaf-shaped head that had obsidian blades around the edges and was reputed to be capable of penetrating a Spanish breastplate, though spears and javelins with solid stone heads were also used.

Like most militarized peoples, the Aztecs utilized ranged weapons in battle to soften up their enemies with missiles before closing with them for melee combat. One such ranged weapon which was ubiquitous with the warriors of Mesoamerica, including the Aztecs, was the Atlatl; a spear-thrower that hurled an obsidian tipped dart that was fletched with feathers so that it looked like an arrow from a giant's bow and had a range of over a hundred meters in the hands of an average warrior. The men of the Shorn Ones, Eagle, Jaguar and Otomi military orders were not average warriors. The Aztecs also used hardwood bows with obsidian tipped arrows for ranged combat. The obsidian arrowheads were too brittle to penetrate the steel armor of the conquistadors but they tended to burst into a shower of sharp fragments on impact that provided dangerous shrapnel to the targeted man as well as the people in his immediate vicinity. Slings made from braided agave fiber were used to hurl large stones or hardened clay shot.

"Holy shit..." Courtney said as we stood on ones of the causeway's stone bridges and watched as Cortes' brigantine led hundreds of war canoes and glided across the lake directly towards us.

"We will stand by you" Jen said resolutely, making me wonder again how I had managed to inspire such loyalty, "no matter what."

"Are you sure? You are just teenage girls and I'm asking you to fight a war..." I asked, unsure.

Courtney just chuckled, "something most governments do without blinking an eye."

"You need to stop worrying about us and start focusing on defeating these murderers before they can wipe all these people from the face of the earth." Jen said.

"I know, I know. I just..."

Jen pressed a finger to my lips to halt my protest and then surprised me by saying; "I know you are grieving, we can feel your pain and rage. Let. It. Out!"

Emotional pain washed over me, burning away the numbness and denial that had filled me since my mother's murder. My life with her flashed before my eyes, the best memories of my life, the love and support she always provided for me. It was unbearable and I became enraged that I could no longer access my best memories of her without feeling tremendous pain. The thought of the sacrifices that she made so that she could be a part of my life, sacrifices that eventually killed her, made my heart break. The Spanish hadn't been responsible for her death but they certainly would suffer for it.

The enemy fleet was now less than two hundred meters from the us and smaller sections of canoes began to break off to head towards the bridges built into the causeway that allowed watercraft to pass underneath. The maneuver would allow them to attack my men on the causeway from both sides. The main body continued on towards the section I had picked for the battle, where Jaguar warriors and the Shorn Ones had been dispersed among the normal soldiers to create a battle line facing the incoming Spanish and their traitorous Texcoco allies. The causeway was about fifty feet wide and made from solid blocks of limestone, allowing a suitably deep line and providing a good makeshift rampart to defend since it rose up more than a meter above the water.

The Aztec infantrymen had been outfitted with large ceremonial shields that were too heavy for long distance marching but provided superior protection due to their large size and the fact that their faces were covered with pieces of jade, obsidian and turtle shell that formed a mosaic depicting divine or supernatural entities. Behind them were lines of archers while dense squares of slingers were stationed at either end of the formation. I nodded to the nearest Aztec captain and he ordered the archers and slingers to loose their projectiles in alternating volleys.

I watched the falling obsidian tipped arrows pierce the bodies of the warriors of Texcoco and burst into shrapnel on impact with Spanish armor. The large sling stones were more effective against plate armor as the energy from the blunt force trauma could be conducted through the layer of steel and the padding underneath. When the stones struck exposed soldiers there was a sickening sound of crunching bone and headshots often crushed the entire skull inwards. I signaled the same captain and he issued the order for the archers and slingers to change ammunition.

"Holy shit!" Courtney gasped, looking up at the night sky.

"What is th..." Jen started before being awed into silence.

Taking a moment to look up at the sky, I was awed by what met my eyes. The sky was full of an impossible number of ravens, nearly invisible against the dark night sky. Reaching out with my mind again like I had done in the palace menagerie, only on purpose this time, my mind easily connected with those of the surrounding wildlife again. However this time there was a different clarity and... control that startled me and I immediately released the power and felt it retreat. Overwhelming was not adequate to describe the sensations. Nor was any other word in the English language.

My attention was directed back on the battle as my missile troops switched to specialty ammunition that I had quickly devised with the motivated help of thousands of laborers. The arrows had shafts painted with layers of watery clay and large obsidian heads, each of which was stuck into a brazier of hot charcoal until the obsidian was glowing with heat. The slingers used tongs to load large hollow clay balls that were also heated in hot coals; each filled with sharp obsidian flakes while any remaining gaps were packed with powdered arsenic from the local copper mines. Both proved even more destructive and dangerous than I had imagined.

I watched as orange streaks that I knew to be arrows with red-hot obsidian heads fell from the sky to explode into what looked like a shower of sparks but was actually a dangerous explosion of hot shrapnel anytime they struck something harder that wood or flesh. Even the arrows that missed and fell into the water burst on contact with the cool water, sending shards of volcanic glass into anyone or anything nearby. Canoes were set aflame as the hot arrowheads embedded themselves deeply into wood and began to smolder while obsidian flakes and poisonous fumes were scattered widely around the impact sites of the sling projectiles. Even the men on Cortes' brigantine were forced to splash buckets of water over several small fires.

I looked out over the water at my enemies dying and reflexively looked up at the full moon that sat huge in the night sky, casting it's ghostly light over the carnage below...

The full moon!

A demonic roar ripped from my throat as the bloodlust suddenly intensified inside me, causing Jen and Courtney to fall to their hands and knees. I looked on, my call ceasing in shock as the full shift overtook them both for the first time in their lives. They shifted into a pair of black wolves nearly as large as my own lupine form. However their eyes weren't the glowing blue of beta werewolves but rather an incendiary orange that made it appear as if their eyeballs were filled with flickering flames glimpsed only through the windows of their irises. However the greatest surprise was when ethereal orange flames burst from their black fur.

The strange orange plasma of the otherworldly fire did not harm them at all and at that same moment the brand on my chest began to glow brightly. It gave me a pleasant warmth that ran through my limbs and up my spine. The men surrounding us looked on in awe rather than fear and the intensity of the red my own irises increased. Somewhere in the back of my mind I realized that Jen and Courtney, my whole pack in fact, were no longer Werewolves. At least not exactly. Now they showed all the traits of Hellhounds; successors to the extinct species of true dragons as guardians of the supernatural.

There was little time to ponder these new developments as the front ranks of the enemy fleet was within fifty meters of the causeway and closing fast. Cortes' ship changed course enough to bring it's four cannons around and fired a broadside volley of grapeshot that caused devastation on the far left section of my line as grape-sized iron balls cut through flesh and bones. His musketeers and crossbowmen added to the carnage by unleashing a solid volley of their own, focus mostly on the center. My kneeling men raised their shields and held firm. A good portion of the musket balls and crossbow bolts sailed over their lowered heads and the large, decorative shields proved much more effective than one might expect. Despite the solid defense, many fell to be replaced by another man from the rank behind.

However the Spaniards weren't the only ones to benefit from the closing range. The warriors of Texcoco and Spanish fighters alike batted at flaming clothes, choked on poisonous fumes or found themselves blinded and cut up by the sharp fragments of searing arrowheads that struck their armor or immediate surroundings and shattered. The slingers were particularly effective since they were located on the wings of the formation and my orders had instructed then to angle their projectiles towards the center in order to put the attackers in a crossfire. Aztec infantrymen, led by the Jaguars and Shorn Ones, unleashed volley after volley of fletched darts from their Atlatl spear throwers. As the frontmost vessels prepared to land, the archers and slingers switched back to standard projectiles and sharply increased their rate of fire.

The first rows of war canoes were almost entirely wiped out by the intense close range missile fire, despite the enemy's attempts to clear landing zones with musket fire, arrows and darts of their own. Unfortunately there were thousands more and the corpse ridden vessels quickly built up into an unstable but serviceable boat bridge that would allow the enemy warriors to reach the causeway. The invaders quickly surged forward over their dead and seized the floating platform to fight from. My Aztecs didn't contest this move, following my orders to hold the line on the edge of the raised causeway in order to preserve our defensive advantage.

The ranks just behind the shieldbearers were armed with Macuahuitl swords while those behind them wielded long Tepoztopilli spears that could be thrust in between their comrades to the front in order to skewer the enemy. These men lowered themselves onto one knee behind the shieldmen, who carried the large ceremonial shields along with short spears and daggers for close combat. These shield bearers lined the edge of the causeway, kneeling down so that the height advantage provided by it's raised construction wouldn't leave their feet and legs vulnerable to the attacking soldiers of the formerly allied Texcoco. The archers behind fired arrows over their heads at the oncoming canoes in coordinated volleys of razor rain.

The first attackers died on the thrusting spears of the shieldmen as they rose from climbing over the swaying canoes of their fallen comrades. The unstable platform proved difficult to cross with any speed and the rival Mexica fell rapidly. It wasn't long before the bodies of dead Warriors were piled as high enough as the edge of the stone causeway and enemy warriors found themselves able to use their piled dead as a ramp to charge up.

"RISE!" I ordered.

The shieldmen, spearman and swordsmen all stood to meet the oncoming threat. Texcoco's warriors climbed up the ramp quickly to find themselves faced with a solid shield wall instead of the conventional line of warriors. They paused for a second, confused about how to proceed against a solid front of large ceremonial shields. That provided enough time for the men behind them to thrust out with solid obsidian tipped short spears that were barely longer than a man is tall, taking them in the throat and groin. The stricken men rolled backwards and were soon replaced with other warriors eager to spill Aztec blood for one reason or another.

They too fell.

The shield wall proved a very effective innovation against the native troops but to the Spanish it was nothing new. A blast from the cannon on Cortes' ship took out a dozen of his own Indian allies but also opened up a gap in the shields that a group of his conquistadors were able to take advantage of. Before the shieldmen that had fallen to the cannon's grapeshot could be replaced, a group of Spaniards from a dozen different canoes had consolidated into a single group charged the freshly opened gap with a fury. The remaining men in position to oppose the charge were disoriented by the cannon blast that had nearly taken their lives and quickly fell to steel swords. The Spanish rodeleros were armed with small round shields of thin steel and side-swords and protected by breastplates and helmets made from munitions grade steel, a mass produced steel used for bulk production of factory grade weapons. A volley of arrows killed a few of them outright and caused the group of Spaniards to raise their shields and slow.

"Stay here!" I yelled to Jen and Courtney, enforcing the command with my power over them, as soon as I saw three more groups of conquistadors making their way to the opening held by the first.

Signaling a group of Eagle warriors waiting nearby, I raced over towards the breach in the shield wall as they struggled to keep up. The Eagle warriors were the finest spearmen in the empire and they had been personally instructed by me in how to defeat an armored opponent, unlike the common soldiers that even then flight to prevent the conquistadors from penetrating further into our lines. By the time I arrived, the common spearmen had stepped up to block their advance but a few dozen Spanish crossbowmen and a number of arquebusiers had climbed into the acalis floating around the breach and were now pouring their fire through the opening.

My first action was to detach one hundred archers and fifty slingers from their positions on the wings and in the rear to deal with the crossbowmen and arquebusiers. On my command several more swordsmen from local unengaged areas took up slings and atlatls to add their projectiles as well.