A week after the harvest season, the Emperor of the Totonac empire overlooked the totals for the harvest. It was discouraging. They had enough food and seed for a year and enough left over for a quarter of the year after the harvest. If they had a bad harvest, then many more sacrifices would have to be made. The giant deer people burned too many fields and too many grain storage bins. If something didn’t change, it would take years to recover.

But great sacrifices had been made, and some giant deer people were captured and instructed in the Totonac language by beauties from Tezcatlipoca’s harem. Change must come. It had only been two months, but they had extracted a lot of knowledge and ideas from the men, all the while teaching them the Totonac language. The Emperor looked over their notes and talked with the women, and he was confused on several points, so after confirming the men grasped some of their language, he called them into his throne room.

As the men walked into the throne room, they looked conflicted. The Emperor could not understand their point of view. As far as he was concerned, they had been given women, wine, and all the food they could eat, unlike most of his nation. But he could not understand the horror they felt at seeing so much death brought about casually. In the two months they had been there, their beautiful women had brought them to various festivals, and during each festival, they watched as people were killed en masse. They saw the deaths of babies, children no older than seven, men and women. Some of the people who were sacrificed fought, cried, and yelled before being mercilessly cut down. Others happily accepted that their life was over.

And so the nine men from the Trade Alliance stood before the Emperor with fear in their hearts because they knew this Emperor could kill them at a whim. In fact, they had watched many people die at a whim and watched the people feast afterward with great joy and happiness. They were conflicted because they enjoyed the women they were given and the wine they drank, which was something the Trade alliance did not have. The fear of death conflicted with their desire for the things the Totonac Emperor provided them.

As the men stood before the Emperor, the Emperor said, “Explain where you got the giant deer.”

The men looked at each other, trying to determine who should speak first. They already knew the giant deer referred to the buffalo since their women had already questioned them about it. Their women were very open that they were teaching them language and questioning them for their Emperor, so they did not expect to cover any new topics today, only filling in the gaps in the Emperor’s understanding.

After a moment, all the men turned to the one at the end, Kestejoo, as he was the leader of their expedition before they were captured. He turned to the Emperor and said, “It’s a little complicated. The giant deer are what we call bison. They are not really deer, but this part of the world doesn’t have bison, so I could see why you would think the bison are giant deer. Normal bison are wild, dangerous creatures, but chief John, the chief of Texas, managed to tame some bison somehow, and all the calves of the tamed bison are also tamed. It turns out if you breed the tamed bison with the wild bison, you get bison you can ride.”

“So, the giant deer, the things you call bison, can be found to the north?”

“Yes, sir. They are everywhere up there, in giant herds. But it took chief John years to make them ridable. Most people thought he was crazy, but he kept at it, and eventually, he made it happen. If your warriors go north and capture wild bison, it will take them years to train them as well.”

“Do you think we could buy them from the Trade Alliance?”

“No… well, not directly. You killed chief John’s son, so nobody will have anything to do with the Totonac nation. But if they didn’t know it was a Totonac person buying it, then I am sure they would sell it to you.”

“You keep mentioning this, John person. Who is he?”

“He is the chief of the tribe of Texas, but he has formed an alliance with many tribes and helped improve every tribe.”

“So he is your emperor?”

“No, sir. If he was anything, I would say he is an elder for all the tribes.”

“An elder? What do you mean?”

“I think in your palace, you call them advisors. Chief John does not make any tribe do anything except not fight each other. As long as the tribes don’t fight each other, he lets them do what they want, but he gives advice and gifts. For instance, he has given all the tribes of the Trade Alliance various grains, crops, iron, bison, buffalo, ships, water wheels, and many other things. He is a brilliant man well worth listening to.”

“I don’t understand. Is he an advisor because he is weaker than the other chiefs?”

“No. If he wanted to, he could conquer all the other tribes and force them to do his bidding, but he believes in something called mercy.”

“Mercy. What is that?”

“Mercy is where someone does you wrong, and you let it go so you can have a better relationship with them.”

The Emperor smiled and said, “Do you think he will show us mercy and sell us those giant deer?”

Kestejoo frowned and said, “Do not take this the wrong way, but he has told all his people that as long as you sacrifice people, no tribe should have anything to do with any Totonac.”

The Emperor frowned and said, “But he shows other mercy. Why not me and my nation? Is it just because we killed his son?”

Kestejoo very carefully thought about how to say his next words as they could be his last, “My understanding is that he views mercy as something shown to someone, or a tribe when they recognize their fault and stops doing it. He sees human sacrifice as a fault, and as long as you practice it, he won't show you mercy.”

“Fool.” Then the Emperor thought about it and said, “A smart fool, but a fool all the same. The gods need blood sacrifices to fight the war against the darkness. Without those sacrifices, the sun would not rise. But I did not bring you here to lecture you on the foolishness of this chief John. I asked you here to find out if you can help us. When your giant deer riders came through, they destroyed our grain storage and many of our fields. We have been able to recover with the harvest, but if we have a bad year next year, we will struggle. Has this John given you any information that can help us?”

“Chief John has brought us the idea of irrigation.”

“We have had that for centuries.”

“He also showed us how to use bison and buffalo dung to fertilize our fields.”

“What is this fertilizer?”

“Plants grow better when you mix animal dung into the soil.”

“We have lots of dogs; we could mix their dung in the soil and see how that works.”

Kestejoo winced then said, “I hate to interrupt, but John made it very clear that dog dung is terrible for plants. My woman took me to one of your turkey farms; perhaps their dung would work. But definitely not dog dung.”

The Emperor turned to one of his advisors and said, “Have the slaves take dung from the turkey farms and spread it around a maize field. If it improves things, all the better. If not, then we have lost one field.” The advisor left to follow his orders, and the Emperor turned back to his captives and asked, “Anything else?”

“You could always fish in the sea.”

“How? The sea will flip our canoes over.”

“Build longboats… giant canoes.”

“How do you build them?”

“We use axes to cut down the trees, saws to cut boards out of it, put the boards in a steam box, so they are easier to shape, then nail them together.”

The Emperor told his servants, “Bring out their tools.” The servants immediately turned, went into another room, and then began bringing out everything the Jaguar Warriors took from their camp. “Are these the saws, axes, and nails you are talking about?”

“Yes.”

“How do they work?”

“Can you have your men bring in a log?”

“Of course. Servants, bring in a log.”

When dozens of servants dragged in a massive forty-foot log, the captives realized this entire thing was planned. And then, they began showing the Emperor how to cut and shape the wood to make a long boat. Everyone in the room was enthralled by their method. They had never seen anything like it. They spent hours watching the captives easily take a tree apart, then stitch it back together into something usable. It was magical to them.

When they were finished, they had a rather small flat bottomed boat, although it was bigger than any canoe that could be found in the Totonac nation, and the Emperor asked, “The tools that took the tree apart, and that you used to put it back together again, are they made with the same substance?”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“Iron.”

“Do all the tools and weapons you use have iron in them?”

“Not all of them, but everything chief John introduced does.”

“So, if my nation is to have your power, it would need to have iron?”

The captive would not have put it that way, but he said, “If I understand you right, then yes.”

“How do you make iron?”

“You have to find a special rock, then you make a fire to melt it. Once it's melted, you take a hammer, tongs, and fire, and shape it into these tools.”

The Emperor got very quiet and began tapping his fingers on his throne as he was thinking; finally, after a minute, he said, “Are the special rocks rare in the Trade Alliance?”

“Yes. Only a few villages have access to it. And before you ask, chief John encourages as many villages as he can to find more places where they can find that rock. If things were up to him, every village would have access to it.”

“That’s too bad. But it appears you know what you are looking for. Clearly, if my people are going to prosper and get better, we need iron. We also need giant deer, what you call bison, but I think that is out of our reach for now, but we should be able to find iron somewhere in our great nation.” The Emperor shook his head in frustration, but they could not risk stirring up trouble with the stronger nation right now; then, he turned back to his captives, “I am going to send you nine out across my nation, and your job is to find a source for this iron. Whoever finds it will be greatly rewarded. But until you find the rocks that you get iron from, you will be separated from your women. If you wish to return to them, then you will find those rocks.”

And so the nine had their orders, and each one was given to a small squad of sixteen Jaguar warriors to look across the Totonac nation to find iron ore. As they left, the Emperor looked at the food situation in his nation and began thinking about more hard choices he would have to make soon. Soon it would be time for war, and food storage was an obvious target for his enemies. Even if the giant deer people, the Trade Alliance, never attacked him again, four other nations would attack him over the winter, and they had to survive.