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back of one of Verily's steeds and instead of anyone riding they led the three horses back to Springfield together. They moved with the greensong, all of them, and got there in only an hour of steady running, and the horses weren't lathered or winded, and the men weren't hungry or tired, and as for thirsty, they had all drunk from that clear spring, and they were loath to taste any other water, because they knew it would taste like tin or mud or nothing at all, instead of sweet, the way they knew now water ought to be.

Chapter 15

Popocatepetl

It was such a lovely ride from the coast to Mexico City. Everything went just as Steve Austin had predicted-which was not at all how Calvin expected it to go. Their ship put into the free port of True Cross, where whites could come and trade without fear of being taken for sacrifice. They took three days finding interpreters and buying supplies and pack mules, and then they went to the inland gate of the city.

"You are not safe to go outside," said the door warden.

"We're going," said Steve Austin. "Out of the way."

"I will not let you go. White people die out there, give bad name to port of True Cross."

Austin raised a pistol to shoot the man in the head.

"No, no," said Calvin impatiently. "What did you bring me for, anyway, if you're just going to go shooting people. What if we need to get back here and thanks to you they shoot us on sight?"

"When we come back we'll be the rulers of Mexico."

"Fine," said Calvin. "But let me do this."

Austin put his pistol away. Calvin studied the gates for a few moments, trying to decide whether it was worth the effort to make this a truly spectacular event or merely a practical one. He decided that something showy, like making the gates burst into flame and burn down to ash, would be wasted here. It was the reds outside this city that they'd need to impress.

So he dissolved the linchpins in the hinges and then, with a gentle nudge, made sure the gates fell outward instead of inward.

The door warden-with no more door to ward-shrugged and turned away. And out they rode, a hundred heavily armed white men, to take on the Mexica.

Almost at once they were confronted by Mexica soldiers. These were not the club-wielding warriors that Cortez had faced three centuries before. They were mounted and carried new-model muskets that had probably been bought from the United States, where Philadelphia-the city of brotherly love-had quite a munitions business going. Immediately they surrounded Austin's army, which bristled with weapons at the ready.

"Patience," said Calvin to Austin. It wasn't hard to make fire, but it was tricky to make a ring of it, and he singed quite a few of the Mexica horses when the flames didn't go quite where he'd planned. But that only made the demonstration more effective. The Mexica backed off, the horses shying and neighing, but then dismounted and prepared to fire through the flames.

Calvin was ready. He knew how Alvin handled this sort of thing, bending the end of the gunbarrels so the enemy wouldn't bother firing. But Calvin wanted them to fire. So he pinched off each gunbarrel inside, not tightly, but enough to keep the ball from coming out. It was quite a scramble to find all the muskets and close them off before the tiring started, but it helped that the Mexica commander kept shouting for them to surrender, while the panicky horses kept the Mexica in an uproar long enough for Calvin to finish the job.

"Don't shoot," said Calvin.

"But they're about to lay a volley into us," said Austin.

"They only think they are," said Calvin.

The Mexica captain gave the command, and the soldiers pulled the triggers of their muskets.

Whereupon every single one of them exploded, killing or blinding almost all of them, and blowing the heads right off more than a few.

The Mexica captain was left standing there with his ceremonial obsidian-edged sword and only a few of his men still alive enough to writhe on the ground moaning or screaming in agony.

"Shoot him!" cried Austin.

"No!" cried Calvin. "Let him go! You want somebody to tell the story of this, don't you?"

Austin didn't like being contradicted, but it was plain that Calvin was right. What good was it to put on a show like this, if there wasn't somebody left to go tell the rest of the