I admired your bravery. You were willing to die for me in the battle. We lost that fight, but there will be another.
“When? How?”
The woman, the Daughter of the Plume, is very wise. She will know where the battle must be fought, and she will go there. We wait for that moment, and then I shall challenge Zaltec again.
And I will triumph.
Poshtli wanted to ask more questions, to talk about the details of their entry into the world. He wondered briefly how long their wait might be, or how much time had passed since they had entered this stuff that Qotal called “ether*) But something in the dragon’s mental tone discouraged any further questions, so he settled back into the lush plumage.
There would be time enough, he suspected, for all these answers and more.
A flight of two dozen eagles soared overhead, following the dusty spoor across the rolling desert terrain. On the ground, Cordell and fourteen other riders held their steeds] to a walk in order to conserve their strength- The journey to] Helmsport would be a long and tiring one, but no part, would be as difficult as this first leg, the crossing of the “ House of Tezca.
For the first week they had moved northward, retracing the route of their flight and following the path of the horde, which now apparently returned to Nexal. Water had been plentiful along this route, and they carried sufficient food for the passage, at least until they again entered settled lands.
But now they cut to the northeast, both to avoid the tail end of the monstrous army, which moved much more slowly than the riders, and to trace a more direct path toward the Payit lands. Chical and the other eagles soared
ahead and above, informing them that the fertile lands of Pezelac lay another week’s journey in this direction.
Loading the horses with as much water as they could carry, the men carefully rationed the precious liquid and embarked upon this scorching trek. Cordell, accompanied by Captain Grimes, the assessor Kardann, and twelve stalwart lancers, rode toward Helmsport. The rest of his legion and its Kultakan allies marched toward the sea.
Only the gods, or fate itself, would decide whether they would again be reunited.
“Gultec, I must speak with you now.” Zochimaloc said with uncharacteristic force. Despite the mounting pressures of the attack that he was about to launch, the Jaguar Knight turned to heed his teacher. Around him, the warriors of Tulom-Itzi crouched among the underbrush, awaiting his command.
“I understand the importance of this attack, and I know that Itza warriors, perhaps many of them, will die as they make it,” continued the old man.
Gultec nodded, uncomfortable under Zochilmaloc’s patient gaze.
“But take care of one thing, my student and my friend,” he said. Gultec flushed with pleasure. Never had his teacher called him “friend” before. “Take care that you survive the battle.”
“Why do you tell me this?” Gultec scowled. “I cannot lead the warriors into battle, all the while taking care to preserve my own life!”
“You are important to us, to all Maztica. Perhaps more important than you know. If you were to perish now, all that you have won for us would be lost. The future would become despair.”
“What have I won for you?” the Jaguar Knight challenged “Thus far, your city has been sacked, your people have fled into the jungle, and now they stand at the brink of disaster. You know that the ants must be diverted, or at least slowed
here. Otherwise we will never make it to the pass in the mountains. There will be no future for the Itza!”
“Please do not ask me to explain,” continued the teacher. “But promise me that you will take care. Keep my words in your mind.”
Once again Gultec felt very strongly his teacher’s deep and patient power. What this strength personified, other than intelligence and wisdom, the warrior did not know. But he sensed it as a majestic might that could only be obeyed.
“This I will do,” the warrior promised. “Now the attack must begin.”
“Fare well in the fight, my son.”
“I will do the best that I can, Grandfather,” Gultec said with a bow.
He turned back to the warriors. Already the hulking black forms of the ants were visible among the underbrush. With a heavy heart, his teacher’s words ringing through his mind, Gultec ordered his warriors forward.
The shrill howl of a thousand war cries split the jungle stillness, heralding the attack against the head of Darien’s inexorable column. The monstrous ants, marching eight or ten abreast, didn’t hesitate, nor indeed take any notice of the assault.
Instead, the first rank trekked forward into the chopping daggers and axes of the Itza. These ants fell, quickly overwhelmed by the onrushing warriors.
The next rank, too, advanced to its doom, and the third followed. Still the insect legs drove the segmented bodies forward, while cold eyes sought enemies for the killing. The humans, too, pressed forward, a savage wave spreading to both sides of the massive insects, disrupting the march and forcing the column to dissipate and turn to its flanks.
But soon the creatures began to exact the price of battle in human blood, which quickly soaked into the damp earth of the forest. The ants reacted with mechanical precision,
chopping and mangling targets as they presented themselves, marching forward as long as no obstacle stood before them. But as brave men fell to the rock-hard mandibles, others swept around them, still pressing the attack.
In moments, the column of ants disrupted into complete confusion. The creatures turned upon themselves, seizing the torn bodies of their fellow insects and instinctively carrying the corpses to the rear. Others turned to the sides, striking and advancing to the right or the left, and the impact of the narrow column diffused into the tangled forest. The file spread, and the insectoid advance lost all sense of direction.
Warriors threw themselves at the monstrous foes, striking for eyes, trying to hack the glistening black bodies apart where the bulbous segments joined. A wild melee spread beneath the jungle canopy as men and insects both perished in mortal clash.
“What is the humans’ intent?” Darien demanded from her position with the other driders near the center rear of the column. The attack had caught her by surprise, but she felt curiosity, not dismay. She believed implicitly that human warriors could not hope to stand in battle against her mighty, unfeeling host.
The drider’s intuitive command, sensing the opportunity in the clash, reached her mindless creatures.
Kill, my soldiers! Kill!
The ant army surged forward, spreading into a broad front, facing the attacking warriors who now spread to the right and left of the column as well as to its front. Insects crawled over the bodies of their fallen kin, seeking human flesh.
“Hittok! Go now! Strike them with missile fire! Take the archers-now!” She barked the command at her drider lieutenant, and the grotesque creature sprang through the tangled column, his eight legs propelling him quickly past the steadily marching ants. The other driders followed, launching their black shafts into the faces of the attacking warriors.
Darien herself muttered a quiet command, instantly disappearing from view with the casting of an invisibility spell. She followed this with another chant, a teleportation spell that carried her to the flank of the human advance.
Here she crouched, unseen, among the underbrush. She saw ant and human alike fall to the assaults of the foe. Raising her invisible hand, she sighted an imaginary line along the Itza attack.
“ Kreendiash!” she snapped, unleashing the power of her magic as explosive energy.
A yellow bolt of lightning crackled from her hand, searing through the fleshen ranks of the humans. Men screamed in shock and pain, horribly wounded, while others fell dead, instantly slain by the hot magic. The bolt seared a black swath through the forest, killing vegetation, ant, and human alike.
Again she shouted, and another bolt blazed its path of blood and pain. Now the arrows of the driders began to take their toll, piercing human s
kin and muscle with driving power. A flush of ecstasy thrilled Darien. She saw horrible devastation wrought among the humans and knew a joy she had not known since her days as a drow.
Advance! Slay them all!
The ants surged forward now, a wave of inevitable death, tearing into the suddenly faltering Itza attack. Men cried out in pain as they fell to horrible maiming and death beneath the tearing jowls of the inhuman foe.
She saw a warrior, clad in the skin of a jaguar, and sensed instinctively that this was the one who had slain Dackto. She raised her hand, and a bolt of magical energy, like a sizzling arrow of light, hissed forward. It struck the warrior in his left shoulder, spinning him around and dropping him to the ground.
She pointed once more. There was a crackling hiss, and another magic missile exploded from her fingertip. Before the second bolt struck, however, a surge of warriors swirled around the fallen knight. The blast seared the back of one of the warriors, slaying him instantly, but she shrieked her hatred and frustration as her original target vanished behind the protective shield of his fellows.
Again and again her magic crackled through the air, but now the humans fell back toward the sheltering jungle. The cohesion of her insectoid column broken, the creatures scattered after individual targets, often dragging a fleeing man to earth, where others of the ant army set upon him and tore him to pieces.
Many of the warriors escaped, but many did not. Darien counted, with grim satisfaction, the remains of several hundred among the bodies of her own slain ants. Now the insects swarmed about the gory corpses, spreading into a vast feeding horde as the remaining warriors vanished into the forest.
Hittok and the other driders came toward her, with the scuttling, crablike gait of her kind that she still found so revolting. Counting quickly, she saw that none of the driders had been slain.
“They escape!” cried Hittok, with a gesture toward the now motionless forest fringe. “We must pursue!”
Darien raised a restraining hand, her face creased with an ice-cold smile. “Let them go,” she countered. “There will be time for more killing tomorrow.”
From the chronicles of Coton:
In mystification over the acts of the gods.
Lotil continues the steady working of his pluma. His tapestry takes shape slowly before us, though I still cannot tell whether he creates a blossom, a bright bird, or perchance an elegant butterfly. Perhaps he blends all three into a design, a piece of artwork as alive as its subjects.
It is a wonder and a glory to see the skills of this man, to observe him in the creation of something that is such evidence of the sublime glory of the gods-of Qotal, who gave us pluma.
At the same time, I sense a great stirring of evil as Zaltec emerges from his slumber. He has recovered from his battle with his brother and has begun to think again, to plan and to move.
As he schemes, he knows that Qotal can have but one more opportunity, and then he concludes where than chance must come.
And so I feel evil move toward Payit, where it prepares fog the final confrontation with the Feathered Dragon
13
RITES OF CAPTURE
“I don’t like it. It’s not like Halloran to be gone so long.” Daggrande huffed in annoyance, but he couldn’t conceal his concern. Anxiously he paced about the small campsite while Luskag and Jhatli looked at him sympathetically. Lotil listened impassively, his short, blunt fingers dexterously working a tuft of plumage into the cotton mesh he held upon his lap.
The camp of the desert dwarves filled a broad clearing in the forest, with several dozen small fires lighting the area. They had feasted on the forest’s bounty, for several deer had fallen to their bows that afternoon. And still Halloran and Erixitl had not returned.
“He’s always been a good lad-reliable, responsible. A true companion, the kind of fellow you’d like to have at your back in a fight.”
Jhatli looked at Daggrande in surprise. Obviously the characterization of the brawny fighter as a “lad” struck him as somewhat unusual. Still, he hadn’t previously appreciated how far back the paths of the two legionnaires were linked. There was something paternal in the way the gruff dwarf spoke of his human companion.
‘”Course, I never told him that,” continued Daggrande, his tone angry, “The big lunk wouldn’t have understood!” Daggrande looked at the group around the fire, as if he expected someone to challenge him.
“ What’re you starin’ it?” he growled at Coton as the cleric eyed him curiously. The priest made no answer, and Daggrande sat down with a sigh. “I don’t know what’s got into me! Surely they’re all right somewhere. They’ve got to be!” He couldn’t allow himself to think of any other alternate c
“Maybe they just wanted some time by themselves,” guessed the youth. Still, a look at the darkening jungle around them dispelled this suggestion even as he made it The forest at night did not create a very romantic environment.
“Should we search for them?” asked the chieftain of the desert dwarves.
“Yes-but not now,” came Daggrande’s response. “We’ll only get more of us lost in the jungle, and we can’t hope to find anything until morning.”
“They could be back before then, in any event,” Lotil offered, though the blind man’s tone suggested that he shared the dwarven captain’s concern.
“At first light, then,” said Luskag. “If they haven’t returned, we shall commence the search.”
Hoxitl stirred in his stench-filled lair, which had once been the grand temple of Zaltec in Nexal. Now ruined stone walls leaned and tilted around him. Where once a proud archway had created the entrance, now a slimy tunnel cut through the piles of rubble.
Beyond the lair, the monsters of the Viperhand prowled restlessly through the ruins of the city Gangs of orcs snarled and fought with each other, only to scatter, howling, at the approach of looming ogres. After the long march across the desert, the creatures had returned to their city with crude pleasure. Yet now, after many weeks of en-forced idleness in the brackish ruins, the pleasure turned to boredom. The beasts, Hoxitl knew, needed activity.
He himself had succumbed to a lethargic passivity that had verged on the comatose. For a time, he lay unknowing his mind vacant, awaiting the command and the vitality OF his god. The towering statue of Zaltec, near his lair, stood impassive and unmoving as the weeks became months. Finally, not knowing why, the monster Hoxitl raised himself from lethargy into stiff, unpleasant movement.
Gradually a command took shape in the cleric-beast’s mind, an image of a destination and a growing compulsion to again put his beastly force into motion. At the end of this march, he sensed, there would be killing, and hearts to feed the god, and final, ultimate victory over the humankind of Maztica.
Hoxitl emerged from his cavelike lair and raised his voice in a high, ululating howl. The sound echoed from the great mountains around the valley, rolling across the muddy, swamp-like stretches that had once been lakes. Among the ruined streets and cesspools, the ores looked up from their bickering. The cry called forth other ores and ogres and trolls from slumber or feeding. All took up their weapons and responded.
Slowly, by ones and twos, then by dozens and scores and hundreds, the beasts of the Viperhand moved to their master’s call. They gathered across the sprawling chaos of the great plaza, perching on ruined temples, clustering in the few flat expanses of the stonework, all of them turning their beastly faces toward the great stone monolith that was their power and their glory.
“Creatures! My children!” Hoxitl bellowed in his grotesque language, and the creatures listened attentively.
“Zaltec calls us, and we must obey! Again we shall march so that all Maztica will know the terror of our presence!”
His creatures responded with dull roars of anticipation. The long days of inactivity weighed heavily upon them, and now they stood, once again ready for war.
“Chief Tabub, we bring two of the Big People as prisoners,” explained the little man, who was called K
ashta, after placing his bow and arrows-the tips of the deadly missiles wiped clean of their kurari poison-beside the door to the chief’s low hut. Kashta carried Halloran’s sword with him into the hut. The weapon was as long as the warrior himself.
“It is as I dreamed, as the Lord of the Jaguars told me in my sleep,” said Tabub in a low monotone. The chief sat cross-legged, flanked by two of his wives. “A man and a woman… she carries a child?”
“Indeed,” whispered Kashta, awed.
“They must go to the pit tonight,” pronounced the potbellied chief. Like Kashta, his face was painted red and black, though in vertical stripes while all the other warriors bore their marks in horizontal lines.
“But this man, he is like no other 1 have seen, no other man in the world,” the warrior objected tentatively. “His face is covered with hair, like a bearded monkeys, and he wears a shirt of hard silver. He bore this great knife, also of silver.”
“Let me see,” said Tabub. He drew the weapon from its scabbard, and his wives shrank back as the glow from the enchanted blade filled the tiny hut. Tabub reached out with one short finger and traced it along the keen edge. “Ah,” he grunted, without any display of pain, as blood ran from a gash in his skin. “This is a potent weapon indeed.”
“The stranger speaks gibberish, also like a monkey, but the woman understands him. She can talk, too, in the normal language of the Big People.”
Tabub’s visage grew stern. “You know the commands! You may not speak with the Big People! They must be placed in the pit, and there they die!”
“But always we kill the Big People! We place them in the pit, and the Cat-God devours them! For how many years must it go on this way?”
The chief’s scowl didn’t waver. “You know of the words of the god, as told me by my father, and his father before him, and on through the history of our people!”
Tabub’s eyes closed, and his words came forth rhythmically, reciting the prophecy that had long been lain on his folk.
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