Never before have I heard of a red-haired people, and from what country they came I know not, nor could they tell aught, save that they came here in the morning of time, in stout ships. Behind them they left a land which had sunken beneath them, drowning a populous country.
They had never been bothered by the Mias and they had no interest in our cause, other than that it promised fine righting. They asked no reward, and wanted nothing but to fight beside us, for fighting seems to be their religion and only pleasure and it seems likely in the end to be their bane.
In the beginning, their legends say, they were many as the forest leaves, and the north country was theirs, even beyond Thule, and many were their cities. Wealthy they once were, with great store of jewels and fine things, but now they are poor through warfare, and so few that one city holds them all with room to spare.
Every male able to march, from stripling to oldster, had come at the news of war against Tlapallan, yet the total was less than four hundred; so I suppose in a few years, as things are going, Nor-um-Bega will live only in the legends of its neighbors.
But they fought stout-heartedly beside my Valiants, for they have no love of life and no care for it
Now I must speak of a shameful thing.
We had found some crocks of wine beneath one of the houses sacred to the Kukulcan and his women. It was thin stuff, but heady, and the first wine I had seen since the wreck of the Prydwen. I made a fool of myself without any trouble at all.
On the eve of our proposed march upon Miapan, I gathered my tribunes and centurions in my quarters for celebration and we all got pleasantly drunk.
I was trying to teach them a drinking-song of the Sixth and having a terrible time, for very few could understand the words and none had any idea of how to carry a tune. Music, as we know it, is strange to them. I was roaring out the chorus, trying to outshout my leather-lunged friends, who were all singing to a rhythmic clashing of cups:
“Drink! Drink! Let the cannikins clink
And with wine let us make merry!
For with the dawn we must be gone
And there will be some to bury!”
Suddenly I found that I was singing alone and looked stupidly at my fellows, who were glaring at the door with expressions of awe and dread, and twisting about, I saw Myrdhinn there, eying us with a look of furious disgust, much as Moses must have looked upon the revelers around the Golden Calf.
“Swine!” he roared. “Wallowers in filth and iniquity! While you take your ease, your friends and fellows have been fallen upon by the Mias and are dying in torture. Swilling fools, your end is sorrow and destruction! I lay a word upon you, Ventidius. Your nation shall wander in search of a home and shall not find it for six hundred years. They shall be wanderers upon the face of the earth, until they find an island in a lake. Upon this, marked by an eagle with a snake in its mouth, let them settle, but they will not thrive.
“Their ways are bloody, they are beyond regeneration, they have cast aside my teachings and perverted them. I repudiate them, and Ventidius, yourself shall never see Rome! Now bestir yourself and follow me!”
“But how do you know?” I asked, a bit stupidly, still fuddled with the drink.
“Oh, hurry, dolt! Hurry!” he cried impatiently. “While you talk brave men are dying. The woods are , full of my messengers.
“You know I understand the language of the birds. It was folly for Hayonwatha to go scouting. I had already told all officers what lay before us, and how we must attack. Hayonwatha was at that council fire. Poor headstrong fool! He must see for himself, and so he has got himself taken and thirty others with him!
“Well, brave souls, they knew how to die, and most are already dead, but if they have followed the usual Mian custom and saved the leader for the last, there is yet a chance for your blood-brother if we are quick., Haste, then. We will talk as we go.”
My head had been rapidly clearing.
“Give your orders, Myrdhinn, but I fear it is useless. The host cannot reach Miapan in less than six hours.”
Myrdhinn smiled a tight-lipped smile.
“No, the host cannot, but you and I will be there in that many minutes.”
And as I gaped at him, wondering if my humming ears had heard him right, he snapped out an order to a staring tribune:
“Bid a trumpeter sound. March at sunrise.” (The eastern sky was already pink.) “Say to all the host that their commanders have gone ahead and will meet them on the road to Miapan. Let nothing stop you.”
He saluted and turned away, and as Myrdhinn and I slipped into the forest, I heard a hundred shell trumpets braying their harsh reply to the clear sweet notes of my own trumpeter, with his instrument of bronze, and I knew that soon, perhaps for the last time, the old bronze eagle of the Sixth would look down on marching men.
Once in the seclusion of the trees, Myrdhinn seemed to forget the need for haste. He sat down upon a log and motioned me beside him.
From his breast he drew out a small vial and held it to the light. I could see a few small dark pills rattling within it.
“With these, Ventidius,” he said reflectively, “we shall conquer time and space, and in a few brief moments cover the miles that stretch between us and Miapan. I cannot tell you what is in them, nor how they are made. They were given me by a desirable Thessalian witch, with whom I dallied away a summer’s days—long ago, when I was young. We used them to halt the swift pace of Chronos. We spent years of delight together, in one golden month of the time that others knew. She gave me a few that remained at our parting.
“Well, well, she is long since dust, and if there is black magic, or sin to account for, it lies in the compounding, not in the partaking!
“Come then, Varro. Let us each swallow a pellet. Perchance it will bring me memories of red-lipped Selene—and wicked days.”
He rolled one out into my palm and I placed it on my tongue.
Itfras faintly bitter, I thought. Then, as it dissolved, my eyes became blurred. I rubbed them, but they remained misty for what seemed a long time; then, as they cleared, it seemed that I had become stone-deaf. Directly before me, a little bird had been singing to greet the sun. I saw him there upon this twig. His mouth was open, so I knew he still was singing, but I could not hear a note. I stared, trying to understand, and noticed also that the wind, which had been strong, had stopped entirely.
Myrdhinn was eying me wtih amusement. “Come,” he said, and I knew that I was not deaf. “Let us haste now, to Miapan.”
I rose and followed him, in that strange and deathlike hush which had come over the forest.
Behind us, at the gates of Colhuacan, a company was surging out, or had been. Now they stood as though frozen, some with one foot raised in midstride, but immobile, while above them floated a pennon, oddly twisted, but not fluttering. It was as though it had been suddenly changed from a flapping bit of cloth and feathers to a replica of itself carven from wood or metal.
Myrdhinn led on. I noticed that when he pushed a branch out of his way, it did not fly back and strike me, but remained where it was.
We forded a shallow stream.
“Look down,” said Myrdhinn. <
I did so, and was amazed to find that the water did not rush in to fill up the holes that our feet left as they were withdrawn from it. Every footprint was to be seen as we looked back from the other shore. We might have walked in soft mud instead of water, so slowly did the liquid flow back.
We walked swiftly on. A wind began to blow in our faces. It was cool at first, then warm, and soon uncomfortably hot. I saw Myrdhinn pluck at his robe and draw it knee-high. It was becoming brown, as though crisped by the heat
“We must go slower,” he said, finally, “or we will be burned by the friction of the air.”
Then I understood! It was not the world that had suddenly become quiet about us. Our sense of time had been speeded up!
All at once I felt desperately hungry. My bodily resources were being exhausted by the unacc
ustomed demands upon them.
Time passed. We walked on and on. Hours apparently passed, yet the eastern sky grew no rosier. Morning, it seemed, had stopped and would never come.
“Look at the dawn, Ventidius. It is almost the same as when we started. Do you realize how far we have come in little time? Yet we have not hastened beyond a quick stride. We are not breathed. We have but walked briskly along, yet have covered miles in moments. Now you can understand how the legend arose that witches were wont to anoint themselves with a foul salve and fly through the air in the form of a bird. No one guessed that the secret lay in a tiny swallowed pellet, and the witches never told.”
“Look yonder, Myrdhinn,” I interrupted. “The smokes of Miapan!”
“Aye, and thither are we bound.”
“Had we the Mantle of Arthur, which I so foolishly lost, one of us might effect a rescue.”
Myrdhinn looked at me oddly.
“Think no more of it. We shall pass the guards in safety.”
We walked, slowly it seemed, though the wind blew hot against us, around the ravine which bordered the South Fort. The sentries on their high platforms looked out at us like wooden men, without blinking an eye or shifting their position.
Then quickly Myrdhinn drew me behind a rock. I felt a swimming of the senses and like the bursting of a bubble in my ears, sounds began again. Somewhere near the smoke, a multitude was shouting.
Stiffly, Myrdhinn shook out a pill for each of us The sounds died as tune froze around us again, and nothing moved but ourselves, we resumed our journey along the ravine.
We came abreast of the Middle Fort, only five hundred feet wide, but very strong and well built. Here, too, the sentries looked out at us and let us pass without alarm.
Now we could see that the smoke arose outside of the walls of the North Fort. A great crowd of people were gathered there, upon the broad flat plain I have previously described.
Myrdhinn calmly led the way, almost into the crowd, and I followed with some trepidation. If the effects of this drug should wear away unexpectedly, being old and perhaps uncertain in duration, we would be torn to scraps before Myrdhinn could reach for his vial.
We came to a little eminence and looked down upon horror:
Directly across from us, about sixty feet away, was another little mound, likewise unoccupied, as if for some religious reason. Beginning there, as also from our mound, a low earthen roadway ran, elevated a foot above the level of the plain, and about twelve feet wide. These two roadways ran parallel to each other for a little more than a quarter of a mile, where they were joined by a curve.
The roadways and curve were thick with people, facing the enclosure. Here the ground was hidden by a pavement of limestone slabs, upon which many fierce fires were burning, a little distance apart.
Between the fires were two lines of men, armed with sticks and whips. We could see that our captured comrades had been compelled to run between these lines, exposed to the cruel blows of then: tormentors, until from weakness they could no longer leap through the many fires and must of necessity fall into one and be destroyed in great pain.
It was obvious that even the strongest of men had little or no hope of surviving such an ordeal, and indeed we later learned that if a captive should manage to cover the entire circuit of the enclosure, he did not earn release thereby, but was forced to run and leap, again and again, until the inevitable end.
Looking where a knot of men were clustered, whose slow, slow squirming motion showed us that there was, for their own time, violent movement, we saw the stern, heroic face of Hayonwatha.
We had come in time, but not a moment too soon!
“Stay you here,” I muttered, and unsheathing my sword I bounced down from the mound.
At first I cut at the men before me, but I soon found that their passive resistance was not to be overborne. Though I might hew the arm from one, or slash the viscera out of another, it did no good, for the example did not frighten those about in time for them to react and withdraw from my path. I might waste all of the power of the drug and yet not hack through that statuesque gathering.
So I took the shortest way and leapt through a fire. In the tune of those about me, it must have been a roaring, terrifying blaze.
On the contrary, I could see each pointed flame very distinctly. I was not burned or scorched as I passed through it. There was no smell of fire upon my clothing, nor was I more than faintly warmed.
So I came to the cluster around my blood-brother, and hurling them right and left, I sheathed my sword, threw him across my back and returned by the way I had come. In all that way, he did not twist or writhe in my grip.
As I reached the mound again, I saw faces turned toward the mound and knew that Myrdhinn had stood in one position long enough to be observed by those around him. The men I had attacked were beginning to fall toward the ground, but had not quite reached it, and upon their faces expressions of pain had just begun to form.
Those who saw Myrdhinn appear (suddenly to them) must have been astounded. I chuckled at their dismay at the unaccountable disappearance of their last captive, simultaneously with the advent and equally sudden disappearance of a white-robed, white-bearded ancient‘’ mftn, who for a moment trod their sacred mound and vanished into thin air. How could they construe this in any other manner than to suppose that the gods were displeased with them?
Such an occurrence must necessarily dishearten them and weaken their courage.
So it proved. We lay in seclusion, where we could see the multitude, during the time we were waiting for the effect of the drug to wear away. It squirmed and seethed on the plain, like a disturbed hill of ants, scurrying panic-stricken and aimlessly in search of an intruder. It streamed, infinitely slowly, toward the entrances of the North Fort.
Occasionally we pressed Hayonwatha back upon the soft turf, and he strove to rise, though after we had done this three times he stopped his sluggish struggling, and the beginnings of a smile, very curious and horrible to see, could be discerned. Then we knew that we had remained in one position long enough for him to recognize us and to understand that all was well.
Before he had finished his smile, the power passed from us with a rush.
Quickly Myrdhinn explained, forced Hayonwatha to take a pellet, and we did likewise.
Instantly we started back along the road we had come. Somewhere, far behind us, thirty thousand lances were marching upon Miapan, and their commanders must hasten to take their proper posts!
20 The Fall of Miapan
“I once knew a wise woman of Caledonia who had the gift of seeing,” said Myrdhinn thoughtfully, staring out over our earthworks across the plain at the lights of Miapan and the stars above.
“It was her prophecy to me that should I seek to the westward when the time was ripe, there should I surely find the Land of the Dead. Well, I am in a western country of which she could have had no knowledge, and we have wandered far in it, yet there is nothing here to indicate the proximity of an earthly paradise. Other things which she foresaw have come to pass and I hesitate to believe her misled in this matter.
“But all my studies of the stars do not confirm her statements. Perhaps the time has not yet come.”
“What do the stars say?” I asked, shivering in the cold wind.
“Too little. I feel that something is being concealed from me. All that I can learn is that something evil is about to befall, and soon.”
“I know that myself. Look you, Myrdhinn. Two weeks we have been here, and to what good? First they meet us on the plain in pitched battle and we lose a thousand men. Then we attack the walls and find that they have developed bows and arrows since the death of their Kukulcan who forbade them to use such an innovation. True, their bows are not good and their arrows unfeathered, but with a strong pull even their archery finds a mark at the distance they shoot at. The fact is, Myrdhinn, that another two weeks of this will bring snow upon us and our army will disband in spite of all we can do.
“Nay, this is a personal evil, meant for me alone. See yonder. There floats the Ghoul, the dark star—in my house, and in the ascendant.”
“I know nought of mystic lore, nothing more than finding my way north by the Plow. I cannot help you.”
“True,” he said, somberly. “You are a man of war.
Well, let us to thoughts of war. How are the ballistae coming?“
“Forty and six are ready to move up tomorrow. Fifty more will be complete within a week. Of arrow engines we have three score. That total used up all of the clamps. I have had enough boulders dug up to last three days. Arrows are plentiful and fire-lances are being made. I should say that day after tomorrow we may commence such a rain of missiles into the North Fort that they will be forced to evacuate.”
“Good. Let us hope for a speedy conclusion to this bloody affair. What is that?”
A high wail began to our left, rose to a shriek and soared above us like a screaming ghost
“A whistling arrow from a sentry,” I snapped, startled and angry because of it. “Something is wrong in the artillery enclosure. Look, there are flames! An attack, Myrdhinn, a night attack! They are burning our engines!”
I set my bone whistle to my lips and blew a mighty blast.
Aztlan shot out of its sleep in a hurry. Three companies formed on the plain, and as I led them off at the double, the clouds, which had been scattering, came together again and rain pelted down upon us as though the heavens were weeping to watch us.
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