Over the last couple of months, the Totonac Noble, Zuma, had been leading his jaguar warriors north because that’s the direction the giant deer people came from. Before the attack the Totonac people have never heard of or even imagined the giant deer people who easily crushed his nation and their capital city. They desperately needed information.

Zuma’s force consisted of thirty Jaguar warriors and five fishermen. They had no idea how far away the giant deer people were, so they had to hunt and fish as they went north. They simply had no way to bring large supplies with them. They did not have beasts of burden, wagons, wheelbarrows, or even the wheel. Everything they carried had to be carried by them, and so they had to forage as they traveled north. Worse yet, travel was slow because, unlike back in the Totonac empire, there were no roads or bridges; they were traveling across untamed wilderness without maps.

They traveled across jungle, forest, and desert from valleys to mountains to plains. They battled the heat and the elements. At times they battled tribes who were extremely upset they crossed into their territory. Fortunately, the few tribes they fought were small and did not have the manpower of the Totonac nation.

Every three days, they had to stop traveling north and hunt or fish, until they had enough meat to travel north for another three days. Twice as they traveled, they stumbled across people and decided to offer their blood to the gods and smoke the rest of the carcass for their trip. Naturally, as tribes found the leftovers of their people, they sought out Zuma’s men as they headed north.

When Zuma’s warriors fought with the weak small tribes, it became obvious that the Jaguar warriors were just better fighters than the primitive people they fought. A half-starved warrior from some random tribe in the middle of the wilderness that spends his days scavenging for prey and root isn’t a match for a Jaguar warrior who practices fighting every day while some peasant farmer brings him maize. A half-starved tribal warrior's skin is no match for the club, spear, and arrow of a jaguar warrior, but the jaguar warrior's cloth armor does a decent job of stopping the tribal warriors club, spear, and arrow.

As Zuma and his men passed primitive tribe after primitive tribe, he realized if they just had carrying beasts like the giant deer people, they could treat these tribes like the giant deer people treated them.

Eventually, they reached what is known to the trade alliance as the Copper River, or in the world John came from, the Rio Grande. It wasn’t the first river they came across as they traveled north. In fact, one of the reasons why they traveled so slowly was because they had to find a place to ford each river they passed.

Zuma happened to have amazing luck. The closest any trade alliance member came to the Totonac empire was Copper River, and it just so happened that at the first ford of the river, he came across some trade alliance members who were building a lock and dam. He could tell who they were by the giant canoe they had. He was in the palace when an overseer told the story of how the leader of the giant deer people’s son came to their land on a giant canoe.

When Zuma saw the giant canoe, he used his hands to signal his warriors, “Back up, hide.”

The closest warrior whispered, “Why? We can take them.”

Zuma whispered back, “Exactly. These men have a giant canoe like the giant deer people have. This must be them.”

The warrior looked over at the men setting up camp and said, “I do not see any giant deer.”

“When the giant deer people first reached our nation, they didn’t come on their giant deer. They came on giant canoes. These must be some of their people, and we're lucky they don’t have any giant deer with them.”

“What do you want us to do? Wait until night to attack?”

“No. We want to capture them and bring them away before their giant deer show up. So we will attack at first light in the morning. Don’t kill any of them. If you can, do not even break their legs. We have to learn what they know.”

After months of considering the question of learning what the giant deer people know, the warrior asked a dangerous question, “What if their giant canoes and deer come from their gods?”

“Then their gods are stronger than our gods, and we should serve them.”

“That’s blasphemy.”

“How? We know the gods war and fight with one another. If their gods are stronger, then it's only logical to serve them, but we won't know if that’s true or not until we can talk to them.”

The jaguar warrior looked disturbed, but he was pragmatic. If the giant deer people had stronger gods, then it was better to join the winning team. But if their strength came from something else, then they still needed these men to find out.

“Fine, I will tell the men to wait until morning to attack. Anything else?”

“When we capture them, we will tie them up and put them in their boat with any tools we find that are alien to us. Then we will need to escape quickly before the men that are carried by giant deer come. Have the men make paddles; if all of our men get in the giant canoe and paddle, we should make good time.”

The jaguar warrior nodded at the wisdom of the order and said, “I will have the men get on it right away.”

And so, the jaguar warrior left and silently, one by one, told the noble's plan to his warriors, and at first, they questioned the plan until he told them to make paddles so they could make a quick escape. Then they understood, and one by one, they found appropriate branches on trees and very carefully used their obsidian spearheads to cut and shape paddles. It was a slow and delicate process as they tried not to break the fragile obsidian before they finished their task.

As for the men on the river, they were blissfully unaware of the danger that was near them. For the last couple of weeks, they had been working hard and faced no danger outside of a couple of snakes. They were at the ford of Copper River because copper was extremely profitable, especially if you made an image on it and pressed it to paper with ink. The only problem was there wasn’t a good way to get to the Tiwa people and their copper mines because Copper River was unnavigable most of the year. So, they were going to build the first in a series of locks and dams that would allow the trading of copper year-round. They imagined charging nails for those who wanted to go upriver and copper to those going downriver, but unfortunately for them, they were the first in the path of the jaguar warriors. If they had been late by a few weeks, they would have missed the danger, but they were not lucky enough to be late. Their lives would be so different if they were just late.

The jaguar warriors watched as the men used metal tools to shape boards of wood, hold them to the lock and dam, and then use iron nails to fasten them together. The jaguar warriors were supposed to count the number of men they had before the sunset and make sure none left or showed up, but they were fascinated by the tools and construction methods they had never seen or imagined before. In the Totonac empire, each warrior spent time watching craftsmen build various things with wood and stone, but none of them worked so comfortably or easily as these men. As they watched, the hearts of the Totonac warriors went from wanting to kill these men to realizing how badly they needed to kidnap them because they needed their tools and methods to make their nation better.

The Totonac people were not stupid, but they were ignorant, and they lacked knowledge. The Totonac people laid great foundations, built palaces, mansions, and great monuments of stone. They were well versed in base eight math. They had mapped the stars. Their tools were obsidian that came from the might and heat of volcanoes. But the only metal they had was gold. They didn’t know of copper, tin, or iron, and this limited their nation greatly. In truth, it showed their ingenuity that they were able to build mansions, monuments, and civilizations without metal tools. And so, as the Jaguar warriors watched the men work, they realized they would be heroes when they brought these men back. Perhaps their emperor would even say that the deaths in the city were a necessary sacrifice for such valuable tools and knowledge.

Night came, and some of the jaguar warriors slept; others took turns on watch. The night was peaceful. Then minutes before sunrise, during the darkest part of the night, the jaguar warriors on watch woke everyone up, and Zuma led his warriors to the camp of the giant deer people. The hardest and most dangerous part of the assault was when they had to cross the ford that the giant deer people were damming up. But they easily passed it without notice.

Once they passed, the various warriors made their way to where the nine men were sleeping. They quietly and carefully made their way in, and since this was a capture mission, two jaguar warriors leapt on each of the men while another Jaguar warrior tied them up. In less than a minute, it was all over. The men in the camp were utterly unready for any type of attack.

Once they were tied up, Zuma began shouting orders, “Throw them into their giant canoe, and grab their tools. The emperor will want to see them.”

As his men moved around, trying to quickly follow orders, he looked at some of the supplies. He touched their metal ax heads, knives, and saws. Lifted the iron nails and dropped them and heard them clink with an outrightly amazing tink. He brushed his hand over the planks of wood and wondered how they made it so smooth and straight.

All these things were new to him, so he yelled out, “If you can lift it put it in their giant canoe.”

In minutes they put everything they could lift in there, including a lot of foodstuffs they had never seen before and some weird magical material that he could see through.

Once everything was loaded, Zuma yelled out, “Begin rowing. We are headed back home!”

The jaguar warriors did not hesitate and began rowing hard for home. They still remembered their loss a few months ago and still had no way to handle the men carried by giant deer. Fortunately for them, no Trade alliance ship was near; otherwise, they would have known something was wrong because the ship was moving without its sail. The Totonac people never even considered a sail yet, so they were about to dramatically leap in their technology.

As they reached the mouth of the river they entered the sea, and began their long journey south and back home, Zuma gave one final order, “Talk to these men, make them learn our language. We need to learn what they know, but that won't happen if they can not talk to us.”