Memories rushed back to him, dramatic and foggy.
"I was my fault, you see. I was to weak to speak and stand, so Gonzague decided to walk toward the city in all haste, convinced he could threaten them into nursing me once we found them. Then they found us.
It was night when tell fell upon us, a hundred screaming red men, with spears and glass cudgels glistening in the moonlight. He jerked me from the stretcher where I was dozing, shove a gun in my hands. Even in the best of times I am no great fighter, you see, and obviously I was in no condition to fight with a sword ; but I have been in enough gunfights to know just when to fire, which is most of what there is to it. So while Gonzague's shot was lost in the night mine got their leader square in the chest, a lean, tall captain of a sort dressed up as some jaguar-man. It was not enough, though, and soon they overwhelmed and capture us.
One of the warriors had taken up the jaguar disguise, and presently he was trying out our guns with extreme interest. Some smart fellows he was, too, because he managed to load one of them just right, and to lit the wick, but try as he might he could not move the matchlock. So they pushed us around for a bit, trying to get us to talk, and when they saw it was no use they grudgingly herded us into the city, to a wizened, black-avised priest in a feathered gown.
I could not speak proper Aztec at that time, you see, but still it was pretty clear that the jaguar man wanted to keep us alive and the feathered priest would have none of it. Eventually he prevailed, too, and they dragged us struggling to the top of of slanted tower, a few ours before sunrise, to be executed in pittoresque fashion, with hymns, pump and a knife of the sharpest stone I'd seen.
I was too weak to do much, you see, but Gonzague would kick and roar over that convent's chanting, and our prother beg and wail to no avail. They killed them all, one after the other, spread them over a stone altar and tore their hearts out before our eyes. Their screams I cannot describe, your Grace. But I remember all twenty-nine of them just fine, to this day. Keep me awake at night, they still do, when I'm too drunk and not enough, but to those painted witches it seems the most natural of things. The bodies they threw over a flight of stairs, bleeding like pigs.
Then it was Gonzague's turn and the strangest thing happened, because it took a whole score of them to maintain him, and by the time they laid him on the bloody stone and ripped his shirt the first light of dawn happened to break over the mountaintops, and what should it shine upon but that old medallion of his, which he'd always had, mind you ? Well, truth is it shows a chicken, if you ask me, but them savages called it a feathered snake and cried out and start to bicker over some prophecy, saying we were capital fellows and not to be slaughtered after all, except for the old bast..."