The sun set in the west, the evening glow reflecting off the mountains. Autumn on the Mexican Plateau was the deep green and faint yellow of harvest. Birds filled the sky, shouted and driven away by farmers, spying from the heavens on the deep-green cornfields. And across the sprawling camp, warriors patrolled with killing coldness, while the earth grew thick with yellowing dark grass.
"May the goddess of harvest and fertility grant her blessing."
Xolotl stood with his back to the Temple of the harvest goddess, his face solemn as a warrior's, his prayer devout as a farmer's. He gazed at the deep-red sky, clenched his hands with nowhere to put them, his heart tight with tension and anxiety.
At this moment, he did not yet know that the terrifying Typhus had already appeared for the first time in Western Europe during the siege of Baza in the Granada War, and been recorded by history. This rickettsial infection, against which the native peoples of the Americas had little resistance, had a mortality rate of 40% in Europe, while in the Americas that rate doubled, once reaching an astonishing 80%. And fifty years later, this cruel infectious disease would be brought into Mesoamerica by the Spanish, becoming, after Smallpox, the second widely spreading death, taking away tens of millions among the Mesoamerican tribes.
As in times past, Pandora's box of pestilence had once again been opened. And the birds of the Death God spied upon the cornfields and villages, waiting for the day they would swoop down and descend.
"Main God! I beg You, grant Your blessing! From sunrise to sunset, from the first signs to the birth, it's been almost a whole day..."
As dusk deepened, the anxiety on Xolotl's face had nearly taken solid form. He paced back and