“Daggrande. you old griffon’s tail! What are you doing out here?” The man raced forward to embrace his companion.
“Looking for you!” sputtered the dwarf. “What do you think I’m doing! And who are they?”
He gestured toward the file of small warriors, still painted in black and red, who followed Halloran and Erixitl down the trail. The man turned with a flourish, indicating the leading warrior.
“Captain Daggrande. meet Chief Tabub of the Little People.”
Erixitl repeated the introduction in Payit, while Daggrande looked back at Halloran with raised eyebrows.
“They are my warriors,” said Hal, with just a him of a smile, “and our newest marching partners on the road to Twin Visages.”
From the chronicles of Coton:
As our numbers grow and our march proceeds towards its rendezvous with the god.
We make a colorful file now as we advance along dark forest trails. A thousand desert dwarves, new to the jungle and intrigued and mystified by its sights, smells, and sounds lead the file. With them, speaking with their chiefs and marveling at their ways, walks die legionnaire dwarf Daggrande.
In the center, we have five humans-six, to count the one carried by Erixitl. With us walks the great war-horse, Storm. The creature is a wonder to all of us Mazticans, far most of us have never seen an animal so large, and none of us have known one so useful.
And now our column is trailed by more warriors, hundreds of tiny bowmen who have sworn allegiance to Halloran because he answers the call of their prophecy. They
call it a miracle, and though I know it was his magic that “turned night into day” and caused him to be “a giant, even among the Big People,” 1 am not inclined to dispute the miraculous explanation.
Now we pass through the rolling country to the west of high, forested mountains. Though more adventures doubtless lay in our path, I cannot help but feel that our march to Payit gains unstoppable momentum.
15
A MOUNTAIN RAMPART
The summit of the narrow pass loomed as a tight bottleneck in the rugged ridgeline known to the Itza as the Verdant Crest, the range that formed the border of the Far Payit country. Here Gullet: stood with the men of Tulom-Itzi, prepared to make a final stand against the army of ants that had ravaged their city and their lands. Those who could not fight had already proceeded down the western slopes of the range, there to await the resolution of their future.
Climbing the east side of the range, following the tracks of the Itza warriors toward the high pass on the crest, came the steadily advancing swarm of giant ants. Devouring, destroying, and always marching inexorably forward, the monstrous insects swept upward like some malevolent tide. In places, Gultec and his warriors had crossed slopes and valleys of dry brush. These they torched now, in the face of the ants. But the living wave simply swept to the sides of such obstacles, and the few ants who perished in the flames) were left unmourned in the wake of the steady advance.
Through the narrowest valleys they pressed, and up the steepest slopes. The humans outdistanced them, taking temporary refuge in the sheer heights of the range’s central divide. Yet the monsters below and their masters, the driders, had only to look up and they would see their ultimate objective looming before them.
Darien welcomed the chance to battle the humans who had fled before her horde for so long. The fact that the warriors had chosen good ground to defend meant little to her and to her army. What problem were vertical cliffs and sheer heights to creatures that could scale the smoothest shelves of overhanging granite?
The rocky crest stood barren of trees and bushes. Composed mostly of crumbling granite covered with mosses and lichens, the snakelike summit of the ridge towered above the rest of the range. All around, lower ridges, covered with lush foliage, dropped away to the distant, jungled flatlands. The trail from the lower reaches crossed back and forth across the sheer face of this highest ridge until it finally crested the long, rolling peak.
For the last thousand feet of this ascent, the trail broke free of its verdant surroundings, winding in the sunlight and open air through this region of broken, rocky ground. Gultec looked back across the trail below. The slopes to the east dropped steeply away into a flat, dishlike valley. Water and silt had collected in the bottom of this valley, forming a wide, tangled swamp. Hours before, the last of the Itza warriors had pressed through that swamp and made their way up the tortuous trail to this crest,
Gultec knew that the fetid waters of that dank marsh swarmed with snakes and crocodiles, yet he didn’t delude himself into thinking these would provide any obstacle to the ant army. If anything, the tangled vegetation and finger-length thorns sprouting from many a bush would delay the beasts only momentarily. The respite would delay the inevitable attack by a mere few minutes.
Beyond the muck and mire of the marsh, the jungle commenced again, cloaking the lower slopes of the range in green velvet as far as the eye could see. Somewhere within that carpet, Gultec knew, advanced the insect army of his unnatural and terrifying foe.
For a moment, he paused in reflection. He wondered what had corrupted these beasts into their monstrous forms, what had brought them under the command of these other creatures, the man-bugs with their sleek black skin? And what was the secret of that white one, with her bizarre appearance and her shocking powers? Why did all these foul presences work to destroy Tulom-Itzi?
But in the next moment, he shook his head with an angry, self-conscious growl. Why, indeed, did he worry about such things? He was a warrior, and now he had an enemy in war.
It was a cold and implacable enemy, to be sure, all the more! frightening for its complete lack of humanity But never the less it was a problem of war and demanded a warlike solution.
His mind resting once again on firm, familiar ground, Gultec looked around at his warriors. They stood ready all along the crest, though still no sign of their enemy appeared below. They will be here soon enough, Gultec thought grimly.
“Are the others, the women and children, safely away?” Gultec turned to an Itza warrior, a man who had supervised! the further retreat of those who would not be able to fight in this battle.
“They are nearly dead from fatigue, but they are safely off the heights. They have made camp at the western foot of the range.”
Now only the warriors stood along the crest. Proud and alert, the line of men provided the last barrier between the mandibles of the pursuing horde and the people of Tulom-Itzi. Brown bodies lean and muscular after weeks of war-fare and marching, the men of Tulom-Itzi didn’t show their weariness. Their bodies remained taut, their black eyes dark and intent, staring into the murky forest below.
They wore their long black hair pulled back, away from their faces. Unlike other armies of Maztica, no feathered banners fluttered overhead. Aside from Gultec, no man wore the spotted garb of the Jaguar Knight, and there were no Eagle Knights among the Itza at all.
But these men who had been born and lived in peace now proved ready to make a last stand in war. They stood in ranks of ten or twenty. Each rank had gathered a large pile of rocks and boulders nearby. Each man carried a bow and several dozen arrows, all of the precious missiles that the women of the tribe had been able to make.
The warrior beside Gultec cleared his throat nervously “All the old ones and the children are safely down the slope, that is, except Zochimaloc. He insisted that he would see the battle, though 1 tried my best to persuade him otherwise”
Gultec cursed. “Where is he? 1 will speak to him myself!”
The warrior pointed to the old chief. Zochimaloc sat upon a high knob of the ridge, his legs crossed comfortably before him, looking as if he desired nothing more than a few moments of quiet meditation.
Gultec cast another look into the valley below. The file of ants had not yet emerged from the forest, so he judged that he had several hours before the battle would begin. Trotting along the ridgetop, he headed toward his teacher.
“Master,” h
e said, with a peremptory bow, “you must not remain here! You can add nothing to our defense, and your life must be spared! What will the people do if you perish?”
Zochimaloc smiled, an irritating, patronizing look that nearly brought Gultec’s blood to a boil. “Patience, my son,” said the old man. “You must not talk to your old master this way!”
Gultec flushed. “Forgive me, but I speak strongly to reflect the depth of my concern! What do you hope to gain by remaining here?”
“Remember,” Zochimaloc chided him gently, “that although you have learned many things, you do not know everything. Perhaps there is a surprise or two in this old gray head.
“Or perhaps I simply wish to have a look at what war is like,” the old man concluded with that same smile. “I have never seen it, you know.”
“It is not worth seeing,” replied Gultec. “I thought you knew that.”
Zochimaloc chuckled quietly “There was a time when you would have argued long and hard with yourself over that very point. It is true that your time in Tulom-Itzi has changed you.”
“But you are still the same stubborn old man I first met,” the Jaguar Knight retorted. His deep affection for Zochimaloc would not allow him to speak more directly but he dearly wished that his teacher would depart from the mountaintop.
“If the ants press through,” Gultec continued, trying a different tack, “we will have to flee quickly Even young warriors, fleet of foot, may not survive. How do you expect to
outdistance such monstrous creatures?”
His teacher smiled a trifle sadly “I know enough of war in understand that this mountain is the only place you have. chance of stopping them. If they press through here, what will there be to flee to?
“Now, see,” added Zochimaloc, drawing Gultec’s attention with a pointing finger. “Here they come. Do not worry your self about me, but instead tend to your warriors and your battle. I shall take care of myself.”
The warrior turned to stare into the valley bottom a thousand feet below. He saw a red rank of crawling insects advance from the jungle fringe and press forward into the swamp. More of the segmented bodies surged behind, then still more, and soon it seemed that the earth itself was a crawling mass of festering destruction, creeping toward the base of the cliff.
The ants looked oddly proper from this height, like the tiny insects that they were supposed in he. The Jaguar Knight suppressed a shudder as he tried to imagine the dark and corrupt power that had perverted the creatures into the monstrous horde below him.
Gultec growled in frustration with Zochilmaloc’s stubbornness and in genuine shock at the extent of the insect army. Always before he had seen it as a long, snakelike column stretching into the distance, but to a distance that he could not see.
Now the creatures had massed into a broad front, and still they came forth from the forest. There were many thousands of them, and still they came! How could his line of mere humans hope to stand against such an assault?
At the same time, he knew that they had no choice He trotted back to the center of the line, pausing to pat a warrior on the shoulder here or to speak encouraging words to a young man there. The men of Tulom-Itzi stood ready to fight-and to die.
They watched, tense and fearful but still determined to hold their ground, as the huge creatures forced their way through the entangled brush of the swampy valley bottom* Caught in the tangles, some of the ants hesitated, and these buried by the press of others behind them. Soon the bodies of the slowest sank into the mud, forming a ghastly bridge for the following ranks.
The ants pressed forward, faster and faster as their footing became more secure. Soon they reached the base of the
steep slope- They scrambled ahead and upward without pause, and finally the last of the creatures emerged from the forest. Gultec tried to spot the man-bugs among them, but among the sea of insects, he could see no sign of the larger black bodies-or the white one.
“Archers, stand ready!” he criedA thousand bows tensed, slim arrows tipped with sharks’ teeth, nocked, and pointed downward. The Itza warriors awaited Gultec’s command. Though the ants were still far away, a great portion of that distance dropped away from them, so the Jaguar Knight judged that they were within range.
Now! Shoot!” he called, and the missiles soared into the air. “Keep shooting! Aim for their eyes!”
The insects crept up the mountainside while the shower of arrows rained down. The ants took no note of the steepness of the terrain, clutching the clifflike shoulders of the rock as if they were low obstacles on level ground. Many of the arrows clattered harmlessly from the stony surface of the rock, while others bounced from the laugh, shell-like carapaces of the monsters.
But still others found the vulnerable eyes, or, aided by the momentum from their long descent, struck the upraised heads of the ants and punctured the hard shells. One ant, then another, then many of them altogether slipped backward and tumbled from the rock face, falling among the moving mass of their fellows below.
The archers fired volley after volley, sending the sharp and deadly heads of their missiles into the steadily advancing faces of their foes. But finally, when most of the arrows had been exhausted, the firing tapered off.
Still the ants crawled and crept upward, twitching and grasping as their six-legged forms gripped the nearly vertical surfaces with apparent ease. They crawled over the
knobs and shoulders of the slope’s higher places, gathering in thick red streams to cluster upward in the shallow ravines.
Closer and closer they came, advance seemingly unaffected by the cessation of arrow fire. They climbed at the same methodical, unhurried, yet inevitable pace as they had before.
Only now they were close enough for the Itza warriors to see the flat, translucent surfaces of their many-faceted eyes, close enough to hear the clicking jaws of the creatures’ mandibles, opening and closing hungrily. They climbed steadily and came closer still.
Now Gultec stood ready to unleash the second, and most potent, line of his defense.
“The rocks! Let them go! Push them back to the mud where they belong!”
Instantly the Itza warriors dropped their missile weapons, seizing the great boulders that they had carefully stacked along the ridge. Two or three men combined to 1 move the larger stones, while others hefted good-sized rocks by themselves. As the ants pressed upward, one warrior raised a heavy stone over his head, staggering under the weight, and then pitched the rock with both hands toward the swarming mass below.
A trio of warriors nearby pushed a boulder toward the slope. The missile teetered backward for a moment, but then they heaved mightily. Slowly it toppled forward, and then it rolled over. The rock quickly gathered momentum, plunging and bouncing down the steep-sided ridge.
The stone plummeted some fifty feet and then crashed into one of the highest of the climbing ants. It smashed past the creature, leaving the ant flailing with the three legs on its right side. Its left legs had all been crushed by the boulder, and slowly the monster slipped to the side. In another second, it fell free, toppling unnoticed past the ants that climbed behind it.
The boulder, at the same time, continued its destructive plunge. It crushed the head of another ant, much lower than the first, and then tore through the joint between the
segments of a third. It continued to crash downward, smashing and crunching into anything that lay in its path
through the heart of the ant army. Another boulder tumbled free, followed by a handful of gat-sized stones and large rocks that a single man would raise over his head, pitching it into the insect horde. Beginning as a small clatter, punctuated by a dull roar, the deluge of stones started toward the unnatural enemy below.
All along the line, the men threw and rolled their missiles, until the air resounded with the cracks and crashes of smashing rock. A hail of stones tumbled downward into the faces of the advancing ants. The rocks bounced and crushed their way in sharp descent, careening along the slope of the mountain,
some of them cracking and splintering into clouds of debris, while others ricocheted far out into the air, tumbling away from the climbing horde-But many of the boulders rolled true, striking straight into the center of the ant army. They continued downward to crush more heads and snap more legs, cracking the shell-like carapaces and even, occasionally, tearing through an ant and breaking it in twoThe men raised a spontaneous cheer as they saw the attack start to take effect. For the first time, the inexorable advance of the ants seemed to waver. The entire front rank of the ants tumbled away, carried downward by the momentum of the stone storm.
More and more of the boulders crashed downward. Some of these broke away parts of the cliff face itself, and great masses of rock, a few as big as small houses, plunged into the face of the insect horde. More and more of the creatures fell, crushed by the weight of the granite assault.
“See! They fall away!”
“We drive them back!”
“Tulom-Itzi is avenged!”
The normally unwarlike Itza erupted in howls of triumph and cries of savage glee as they saw the bodies of the hated invaders twist and break and fall. A heap of dead and crippled ants formed at the base of the cliff, and still more of the rocks tumbled downward.
Several older males, white-haired and frail yet carrying! sharpened sticks as if they were spears, advanced suspiciously, brandishing their makeshift weapons.
“Who are you? What do you want?” they demanded in the language of the Payit.
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