I left the woman covered and walked.
Nothing to say. Nothing to fix. She was done.
The city stank. Smoke, rot, shit. Dogs ate ribs out of the canals. I kept moving.
I started listing what I needed:
• Water.
• Food.
• Fuel.
• People.
Water first. Canal water is bad. Too many bodies. Needs filtering and boiling. Charcoal, sand, cloth. Easy if I can find pots.
Food. Maize, beans, squash strips. Dried stuff keeps. Some people buried jars in walls. I'll look for those.
Fuel. Wood from beams and doors. Dry mats. Anything that burns.
People. Doesn't matter if they're strong. I need watchers, runners, cooks, diggers. I can't do everything alone.
I found three women and a boy hiding in rubble. One man with a cut arm. They tried to run. I kept my hands up.
"I can make water clean," I said. "I'll show you. Then you do things for me."
They froze. I boiled canal water through a filter—cloth, sand, charcoal. They watched. I drank first. Didn't die.
"You watch streets," I said. "Count soldiers. Steel helmets, hair knots, patrol times. You tell me. I bring food and water back. No talking to anyone else."
They nodded. Thirst makes people agree.
I gave them rules:
• Boil everything.
• Bury waste away from water.
• Use ash or lime.
• Don't shout. Don't light fires at night.
• If soldiers come, hand them an empty pot and cry.
They listened. The man glared. Didn't matter.
I marked alleys with scratches low on walls. Only I'd know. Checked the causeways. Spaniards patrolled lazy, helmets off, tired. Allies carried sacks. Some sacks moved. Prisoners. Good to know, not useful yet.
I kept moving. Found more survivors. Told two women to stay under a cornice. Gave three kids routes for stealing scraps. Taught them where to hide. Paid them with half a squash strip.
At night I set up under an aqueduct arch. Dry, hidden. Built a small fire with two holes so the smoke stayed low. Cooked beans with maize. Thin, but warm.
People came. Five at first. Then more. I made rules:
1. Nobody eats free. You work.
2. No loud talk. No names.
3. No touching anyone without consent.
Simple. Clear. No speeches.
I gave food to the old, the kids, the injured. I ate last. Small portion. They watched me. Good. People believe what they see.
Jobs:
• Women run the pot.
• Boy sorts wood.
• Broken-nose woman sets up latrine and spreads lime.
• Kids run corners in pairs, count patrols.
• Two men help me pull caches at dawn.
Signals: one tap = quiet, two taps = scatter east, three = scatter west. Bell means freeze.
No prayers. No singing. "This is a kitchen," I told them. "Not a shrine. Eat, work, leave. Come back at sunset."
Nobody argued. Hunger keeps mouths shut.
Later a patrol passed. Seven Spaniards, twelve allies. One limping. One drunk. Easy targets if I had five men with slings. I don't yet. For now, I just watch.
I keep the plan in my head:
• Kitchens make groups.
• Groups split into fives.
• Fives run food, water, eyes, ears, hands.
• Weapons are clubs, slings, stones.
• Hit soft spots. Not armies. Never armies.
I'm not here to give speeches about gods or honor. I'm not here to play savior.
First comes bread.
Then comes rules.
Then we see if the city still belongs to us.
That was the plan… but reality is not always what it seems.
I woke up stiff. Stone under my back, smoke in my nose. The pot was still warm, so someone kept the fire going. At least they listened.
The group was still here. Twelve, maybe thirteen people if you count the baby. Mostly women. A couple kids. One old man. Two younger men. They weren't warriors. They weren't even close.
I muttered, "This is it?"
One of the women heard me. She had a swollen nose that looked like it had broken and healed wrong. She sat straighter than the others, like she used to matter. When I asked her name, she gave it without hesitation.
"Cihuatzin."
It fit. She spoke like someone who wasn't used to being ignored.
"What do you mean, 'this is it?'" she asked.
"This," I said, pointing around. "You. Them. Nobody else?"
She shook her head. "People are hiding. Or dead. Or taken. The strong ones are gone."
I looked at the rest. The boy with the bad leg was picking at the dirt. Two women were wiping bowls with filthy cloth. The old man just stared at the fire like it would answer him.
I wanted to scream. Back home, if I wanted a hundred people, I could reach them in minutes. Here, I was stuck with twelve strangers who could barely stay alive.
"Do any of you know warriors?" I asked. "Eagle, jaguar, Otomi ranked warriors, cuachiqueh, archers. Anyone?"
The old man shook his head. "Dead. I saw them fall. The rest were dragged away."
The boy said, "My uncle was an archer. Ran when the bridges broke. I don't know where."
Then Cihuatzin spoke. Her voice was steady, but her eyes weren't. "I knew many. My brothers. My cousins. Men who served under my father. They fought until the end. Now they're gone. Dead, captured, or missing. I don't know which."
Her words landed heavier than the others. She wasn't just talking about neighbors. She was talking about men who actually mattered once. The kind of men I needed. And she didn't know where they were.
I rubbed my face. "So that's nothing. Nobody left."
Cihuatzin frowned. "What did you expect? That warriors would crawl out of the rubble and line up for you?"
"I expected survivors to know who was still alive," I shot back.
The cut-armed man finally spoke. "Most of them are in chains. Or floating in the water. What's left is us. Old, hurt, starving. You think we'll fight tepotzli (metal) with bare hands?"
He wasn't wrong. But hearing it made me grind my teeth.
I spent the day dragging them out, showing them how to look for food. Most didn't know their own homes had hidden stashes. I found two jars of beans, a sack of maize half-rotten, and one blade that still cut.
I turned to Cihuatzin. "You didn't know about any of this?"
She shook her head. "We didn't live like that. Tribute filled the stores. The market always had food. Nobody hid beans in walls unless they were thieves."
I clenched my jaw. They never had to think ahead. Everything came easy until it didn't.
What I wanted was an army. What I had was a line for soup.
That night under the arch, I pushed again.
"I need names," I told them. "People who can fight. People who aren't broken. People who haven't given up."
Blank stares.
One of the women said, "We just want food."
I slammed my hand on the stone. "Then what happens when food runs out? When soldiers take this place? When they drag you off? You think I can cook forever?"
The baby cried. Nobody answered.
I tried again, slower. "I can't do this alone. I need runners. Scouts. Fighters. If all you do is eat, this dies."
The cut-armed man said, "We're not soldiers."
"Then find me someone who is."
Cihuatzin shook her head. "We told you. They're gone. Dead, chained, or hiding. You think they'll crawl out because some boy makes dirty water drinkable?"
"You want to stay slaves?" I asked.
She didn't answer. None of them did.
Later, I sat alone by the fire.
Back home, everything was fast. Groceries in half an hour. Questions answered in seconds. Here, every answer took days.
I hated it.
I wanted to build groups now. Fives, tens, drills. I wanted plans moving yesterday. Instead, I was holding together half-dead strangers who only thought about their next mouthful.
That was the real obstacle. Not steel. Not Spaniards. Time.
And I hated it.