Feathered Dragon mt-3

by Douglas Niles

  But game was plentiful, and so was water, The companions made good time now and didn’t complain when Luskag told them that their path must veer northward, away From the Sea of Azul.

  They made their way through grassy valleys, lush with blossoms, berries, and wild mayz, and followed a multitude of streams and lakes. The desert dwarves spread out in tentative exploration of this new environment, soon overcoming their discomfort in the face of a multitude of food and water sources.

  Erixitl slowly regained her strength. Her skin, darkly tanned and dried from the desert, grew smooth and fresh again. Every day, it seemed, the baby within her grew larger. Halloran rejoiced to the sensations of its kicks against her abdomen. For long hours, the journey became a pastoral adventure for them as they forgot about their mission, forgot about the dangers that lay before them. But then

  thoughts of the looming confrontation with the gods returned, and it would be as if a heavy cloud had moved across the sun.

  Several days after leaving the sea behind, they called an early halt so that the dwarves and Jhatli could hunt While Coton and Lotil rested in the camp, Hal and Erix went for a quiet walk on their own. It was their first opportunity to be alone together in a very long time.

  “These are good lands here,” observed Halloran. Beautiful and fertile. I wonder why there are no settlements of humans.”

  “I don’t know. We have not yet reached the lands of Far Payit. Yet [had always thought nothing but desert lay beyond. Perhaps this place has not been discovered by humans yet.”

  The thought was an intriguing and pleasant one. For a while, it seemed as if they were on an exploration. However, the long trek had been marking their days, and it seemed wrong somehow to stroll aimlessly for a few hours, as if they had nowhere important to go.

  “It seems that life has become nothing but a series of long marches,” Erixitl sighed wistfully. “I look forward to the time when we can make a home again and live there in peace:

  “It will be soon,” Halloran promised. “When this child it born, he-or she-will not have to run from enemies or chase after gods! And neither will we.”

  How much longer will that be?” she wondered lightly. “I’m afraid I’ve lost track. 1 think 1 have about two more. months.” They both knew that their estimation was rough at best.

  For a while, they walked through a shady vale, past meadows of brilliant flowers. They approached a rocky niche where, earlier, they had observed the top of a waterfall Now they pressed through mossy underbrush, hearing the growing noise of a cascade that told them they were getting closer.

  Finally they broke from the brush to stand on the smooth sandy shore of a small pool. Before them, tumbling from

  high above into the other side of the pool, flowed the object of their exploration.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” she asked him. He could only stare in

  wonder at the falls, a narrow plume of white far above that grew from a whispering ribbon of water into a foaming cloud on its plummet into the clear pool.

  “A place made just for us,” he said softly. He took her hands in his, and for a moment, the despair wracking Maztica was forgotten, an unwanted intrusion into this splendid Grotto and its quiet solitude.

  A slight movement off to the side of the grotto drew Halloran’s attention, and he turned with shock to stare into the face of a feathered warrior. The man was naked, with black and red paint in alternating stripes covering his face.

  More significantly, he carried a short, sturdy bow, with a wooden arrow. The tip of the missile pointed unwaveringly at Halloran’s face. He saw a gummy liquid, brown and thick, smeared on the tip of the arrow.

  Poison!

  Only then did he notice that the man stood barely three feet tall.

  From the chronicles of Coton:

  THE MAKING OF THE LITTLE PEOPLE

  When the great gods created humankind, according to the wishes of Qotal and Zaltec and their children, they made man tall and strapping, fitted for war and for hunting. Soon, they knew, he would become master of his world.

  But other gods-Kiltzi and her younger sisters-stole the mold used to make man. They found their brothers’ tastes too warlike and saw that man was too big. They desired a toy, a little person that could become part of (he forest world without becoming its master.

  So the sisters began to work on their own mold. They copied everything that they could from the shapes created by

  their brothers, but they made their humans smaller, that they might more easily serve as toys.

  And when the little people had been made, the sister gods set them free in the deepest forests, where they might for. ever escape the notice of their larger brethren. They bade them to hunt and fish and populate the forest, but not to become its masters.

  The Little People promised to obey, and they did.

  12

  CAPTIVITY AND FLIGHT

  “Who was it?” Darien inquired, her voice icy cool yet taut with seething rage. Hittok had found her in a grassy clearing, and now they squatted among the tall blades, only their elven torsos showing above the vegetation.

  “Dackto. The cat bit him right through the neck and broke his spine.” Hittok explained the death of the drider dispassionately, yet the news had struck them all a shocking blow. For the first time since Lolth had corrupted their drow forms, one of their number had perished.

  “The cat was a human, no doubt-probably a Jaguar Knight,” guessed the albino. “No animal would be so brave or so foolish.”

  “One of those we pursue, whose city we took?” Hittok ventured.

  “Certainly. And when we catch these humans, they-all of them-shall pay for this affront. How fares the chase?”

  “The humans flee quickly through the forest, remaining just ahead of the leaders,” Hittok explained. “Yet the ants are tireless, and the people will eventually begin to fatigue. Then we shall encircle them and take them all.”

  “Very well. We must maintain the pace at all costs. Have you plotted their course?”

  “Yes, mistress. It seems that they head for a pass through the mountains we have observed before us. Perhaps there they will be foolish enough to stand and fight so that we may overwhelm them.”

  Hittok gestured to the purpled massif that lay to the northwest. For days, they had been approaching it, and now they could discern individual peaks and ridges, softly outlined by verdant, jungled slopes. In another day of pursuit, if the people of Tulom-Itzi held to their present course, they would enter the foothills of the range.

  “Press forward with redoubled haste!” Darien barked The command, raising her own swollen abdomen from the ground to stand on her eight spidery legs. “Let us insure that the humans are fatigued when they reach the mountains.” She gestured to the others of her tribe, the nineteen remaining driders, who pressed forward in the wake of the marching column of ants.

  “There we will finish the matter, for once and for all.”

  “Don’t move. Don’t startle him,” Halloran said quietly. Slowly and carefully he stepped between Erixitl and the short man with the lethal-looking arrow.

  “Look. There’s more of them,” Erix whispered.

  He risked a glance around and saw that suddenly they were surrounded by the diminutive warriors. Each bore the shocking stripes of red and black war paint, and several wore feathers in their earlobes or tied to their elbows and knees.

  Each native also carried a short bow and arrow, with a black daub at the head.

  Desperately Halloran’s mind whirled through the few spells he knew: enlargement, light, magic missile… a few others. None offered any hope of extricating them from this crisis. Indeed, a sudden use of magic might be enough to provoke an attack. That was the last thing he wanted to do. The gummy substance tipping the arrows of the short warriors seemed a clear indication of fatal results.

  Erixitl placed a hand, involuntarily he thought, to her throat. He knew she remembered the token she had given up to purchase their passage pas
t the dead of Tewahca. He doubted that the thing would have helped them in this predicament, but the gesture made him feel their terrible vulnerability more acutely than before.

  The first bowman gestured sharply with his weapon. Several others pressed forward, although they stayed out of

  sword range-not that Halloran could have risked a fight here. A terrifying picture flashed in his mind. He saw his wife’s pregnant body, unprotected by armor, punctured by those obviously venomous darts.

  The little man stepped up to him, demanding something in an imperious tone. He made a gesture toward the sword at Hal’s side. Slowly, grimly, Halloran ungirded the weapon and held out the blade and its belt and scabbard toward the warrior.

  Jabbering something else in a rapid-fire, chattering tongue, the little man commanded one of his fellow warriors to step forward and carry the weapon. The bowman kept his weapon trained on Halloran. When the sword had been moved out of reach, he stepped forward, holding the bow and arrow in one hand. With the other, he reached up and tapped the steel breastplate. His dark eyes squinted at the hard metal-Then he spun on his feet and stalked away, turning to stare impatiently at his captives.

  “I think he wants us to go that way,” Hal said in common.

  “Then we’d better do it,” Erix replied in the same language.

  The first of the small warriors, who seemed to be the leader, preceded them around the shore of the pool, white the others fell into file behind them. He pushed beneath some overhanging vines, forcing Hal and Erix to crouch low to follow.

  A narrow trail, surrounded by dense verdure, lay beyond the screening vines. To their left, the moss-covered rock wall of the grotto climbed away. The warrior broke into a trot, and the natives to the rear moved up, raising their bows menacingly.

  They picked up the pace, Halloran keeping a protective hand on Erixitl’s elbow. In her condition she couldn’t run, and the warrior in front of them turned and gestured impatiently.

  “Wait’” snapped Hal in Nexalan.

  For a second, he regretted his harsh tone and thought he would pay for it with his life as the chieftain raised his bow.

  “I… can’t go… any faster,” Erixitl told him breathlessly, speaking the Payit tongue. The warrior scowled as though he understood and disapproved. But when he turned to resume the march, he went a little more slowly. A short time later, he removed the arrow from his bow and slung the weapon across his back. The warriors behind them, Hal noticed with a quick look, still kept their weapons ready to shoot.

  They followed a deep cut in the rock wall of the grotto, and soon granite cliffs towered on each side of them. In places, the rocks were wet and slippery, and it seemed to them that the sun must never reach to the bottom of this crack in the bedrock. The warrior never hesitated, leading them forward as the niche grew more and more narrow.

  Finally they reached a steep progression of stairs- whether natural or hewn from the rock, Hal could not tell- and proceeded to climb. The cool, mossy rock pressed close to either side, and only a thin strip of blue sky, visible straight above them, gave proof they had not entered a cavern.

  After a very long climb, at least two hundred steps, they emerged at the top of the cliff. Here the path led through a deep forest glen, winding along damp dirt. Halloran saw Erix begin to stagger, tired from the long climb.

  “Stop!” he ordered in his firmest martial tone.

  The chieftain whirled around in surprise. Hal blinked, stunned at the quickness with which he had snatched his bow from his shoulder and renocked an arrow. “Can’t you see she’s tired? She needs to rest!” The two stared at each other for long moments.

  Erix leaned against a tree, breathing hard. Gently Halloran took her arm and lowered her to sit upon the mossy ground. The warrior jabbered something, raising his weapon, but Hal continued to meet his gaze.

  He studied the little man, curiosity not banishing his fear but beginning to rival it. For the first time, he noticed the man’s feet. Like the rest of his body, they were barren of clothing. The tops were covered with tufts of coarse black hair.

  In all other respects, proportionally and facially, he looked like a human. His features, behind the garish paint, bespoke a person of pride and confidence. The look in his face, even when confronting a man twice his size, displayed courage. He had a strong chin, a smooth, straight nose, and dark, intelligent eyes. Whether his skin color was the darkened copper of Maztican humans or simply bronzed by a lifetime in the sun, Halloran could not tell.

  In any event, the man apparently decided to let Erixitl rest, for he lowered his weapon and squatted on the ground. For a few minutes, he and his fellow warriors waited, immobile.

  “I’m all right now,” Erixitl said to her husband, awkwardly rising to her feet.

  “Do you think they speak Payit?” Halloran asked her as they started to move again.

  “Can you understand my words?” she asked in the tongue of the Payit. Halloran did not know that language, but he watched the little man with interest.

  “Speak not with Big People,” the little warrior answered awkwardly. “They kill us, many always times.”

  “Why have you taken us prisoner?” she inquired. “We offer you no harm.”

  “All Big People bad,” he grunted, turning away to lead them along the trail.

  “Where do you take us?” she prodded.

  “To village-to feast,” he explained. With these ominous words, he ceased to answer her questions, and they could only follow his tense, naked form through the seemingly interminable forest.

  “They press too closely,” gasped the Itza warrior. “The children, the old people can no longer keep ahead of them.” The man leaned weakly against a tree, bleeding from multiple wounds. His eyes focused only vaguely on Gultec, and the Jaguar Knight could see that they were dull with shock.

  Gultec growled in frustration. Around him tumbled the

  steep hills at the foot of the Verdant Mountains. The fleeing Itza formed a long file in the valley bottom, pressing forward toward a pass high up along the crest of the range But the ants had accelerated the pace of their pursuit, and the Jaguar Knight began to wonder if he had led these people into a colossal trap.

  “The only one left… me. The others… all killed, burned’”

  Gultec noticed as the man talked that the hair on one side of his head had been burned away. His arm on the same side had blackened, as if he had held the limb in the coals of a hot fire.

  “My company… good men, all of them. Why me? Why?” The warrior looked at Gultec helplessly.

  “Be calm,” ordered Gultec, and the man’s breathing! slowed. “Now. what happened?”

  “They did not come after us as they used to,” he explained, breathing more easily “Instead, they continued past, ignoring our arrows. So we pressed closer, knowing the importance of our task.”

  “Then did they turn?” asked Gultec.

  “No. They continued on. We finally tried to advance, to get in front of the column again. Then we saw this thing-like those man-bugs, only this one was white all over, pale like a slug. It had the face of a woman.” The warrior’s voice! choked with horror as he remembered the scene.

  “She raised her hand and called out a word. We saw a tiny bubble of flame, no bigger than a pebble, float toward from her finger. And then the world became hell, with fire exploding everywhere, scorching the trees, killing the men. By the grace of the gods, the fire only singed me, but I alone escaped. All of the others were consumed, left as blackened corpses when the flames receded.”

  “The white one did this, you say’” Gultec had heard the tales of the pale bug-thing that lurked among the ants. He remembered another white creature, the albino wizard of the Golden Legion, who had incinerated a hundred brave Eagle Knights with similar magic. That attack, plus the sudden arrival of the horsemen, had doomed the defense of Ulatos and secured the legions conquest of the Payit.

  Once again the Jaguar Knight growled. He looked at the column of
Itza marching past, the old men and women helping the children, all of them casting anxious looks to the rear. It would be many hours before they could even reach the next valley in the range, and many more such valleys in their path before they reached the pass.

  “We face the risk of disaster if we do nothing,” he finally concluded. “Gather all the warriors together. We will meet at the tail of the column.” His voice was a deep growl, grim with reluctance and foreboding. Gultec’s plan, born of desperation bordering on despair, seemed reckless and mad even as he prepared to enact it. He knew that the Itza had no training, no tradition of melee warfare.

  Yet it filled him with pride, and guilt, to see how willingly they followed his command. But he could see no other alternative.

  “Then, when the creatures move up, we shall attack.”

  Poshtli sensed no hunger, no thirst. It never grew dark, nor did the gray mist show any signs of thinning or dissipating. Yet he knew that many days must have passed since he and Qotal had escaped from the Temple of Tewahca.

  For all that time, he had ridden on the great dragon’s shoulders. Nestled among the bright, flowing plumage, he fell no danger, knew no desires. He had not spoken, nor had the Plumed Serpent made any communication with him. A sense of timeless peace possessed Poshtli, and it seemed to him that it didn’t matter where they were or where they went. His human body seemed like an old friend.

  Finally, though, he knew that this sense of stasis must begin to fade. He felt something that was not boredom, but instead a slow, restless stirring that compelled him to speak or to act.

  “Where are we?” he asked finally, his voice low but level.

  We soar through the ether, away from the plane of men.

  The answer came into his mind clearly, and he could almost imagine it spoken in low, articulate tones. Yet there had been no sound after his own question.

  “Why am 1 here with you?” Poshtli inquired.