Gultec maintained a steady trot into the city. The throng naturally parted for the Jaguar Knight, and in moments he had reached Ulatos Plaza.
"Gultec, come here!" The voice called from the small pyramid in the center of the plaza, and the knight saw Caxal, the Revered Counselor of Ulatos, frantically gesturing to him. Gultec quickly climbed the twelve steps to the top of the platform, seeing that several other Jaguar and Eagle Knights, as well as the cleric Kachin, were standing there with Caxal.
"We have been invaded!" raged the counselor.
Gultec nodded. "I have seen them myself — strange men traveling in great canoes. They gather on the shore below Twin Visages. They are mysterious, but their numbers are small."
"We do not know that this is an invasion!" insisted a third voice, and Gultec turned to regard Kachin, cleric of Qotal. "We must try to speak with them, to see who they are and what they want."
Caxal looked from Kachin back to Gultec. "How many troops can we gather today?" The Revered Counselor tended to be suspicious of his warriors, but now he was frightened, and his fear took priority.
"Perhaps two hundred Jaguars, as many Eagles." The Jaguar Knight looked to Lok, Gultec's counterpart as chief of the Eagle Knights.
"Perhaps… certainly more than a hundred," Lok said thoughtfully. Though the two warriors were not friends, each respected the other as a man of bravery, skill, and judgment.
"We can have ten thousand spearmen gathered by evening, perhaps twice that many by tomorrow," concluded the Jaguar Knight.
"Gather them," said Caxal with finally. "Bring the troops to the top of the bluff, near the Twin Visages. But do not attack! We must learn more about them!" The group broke up, but Kachin stepped to Gultec's side before the knight could leave the platform.
"The girl, Erixitl," hissed Kachin, his eyes blazing with a vengeful fire that Gultec found strangely disquieting. "I have learned that you took her, you or your lackeys. Her death will not go unpunished!"
The knight, a man of steely courage, a veteran battle commander, squirmed under the cleric's steady gaze.
"I don't know what you mean," Gultec mumbled, hurrying down the stairs, cursing all clerics and their gods.
Chitikas emerged from the concealing verdure, and Erix stood numb with astonishment. She saw first that the serpent's skin was not covered with scales, but instead with the brilliant, silky type of down found upon the breast of a parrot. The macaw that had first spoken to Erix stood motionless, watching as the snake undulated forward.
Her astonishment grew as a pair of huge wings, brilliantly plumed in red, gold, green, and blue, broke free from the leafy bower, fluttering very slowly. They emerged from the serpent's midsection, extending a man's height to each side. The snake assumed a weightless quality as more and more of its enormous length appeared, for no portion of its visible body rested upon the ground.
The serpentine shape drifted into aimless coils, slowly writhing in the air, while the wings continued their slow cadence. Its brilliant yellow eyes bored into Erix, yet she felt no menace in the gaze. Hesitantly, needing to relieve her numbed muscles, she sat on a rotten log.
"You have troubles," whispered the creature. "Perhaps I can help you."
"Sure, help!" The macaw squawked its approval of the plan, fluttering down to rest on the snake's head.
Erix finally began to relax. Somehow she felt comfortable in the presence of this strange creature. The droning of insects and the heavy warmth of the afternoon air seemed to soothe her. She sighed. The snake's eyes bored into her, seeming to whirl in opposite directions. Its body moved with liquid ease in a slow dance.
"I come from Nexala," she said dreamily. "Very far from here." And before she could continue, she was asleep.
Mixtal groaned again in soul-wrenching agony. The Ancient Ones would slay him, he knew, but not until an eternity of torment had been inflicted upon his miserable person. He barely noticed the twenty apprentices standing in an awkward circle around him, but gradually he sensed that they awaited his instructions, his leadership.
Several of the youths kept watch over the strange visitors, who as yet had made no effort to climb the bluff. Nevertheless, Mixtal was certain that, after making the journey from wherever they called home, these strangers were not about to limit their explorations to a stretch of wooded shoreline.
It quickly became clear to the cleric that the priests' present location at the base of the pyramid would be one of the first sites investigated by the newcomers when they moved off the beach.
"The girl!" he finally said. "Did anyone see which way she went?"
The priests looked at the ground. Their spikes of stiff hair shook slowly, like a band of porcupines performing a mournful dance.
"Inland," offered one apprentice, a strapping young man named Atax. Mixtal remembered him as one who had wielded the sacrificial knife with exceptional acumen on his initial attempts. Like any apprentice, Atax had made mistakes, requiring the sacrifice to be performed over, even once requiring three victims before the proper cut had been made. But Atax learned quickly, and his strength might now be an asset.
"We must find her!" Mixtal stood quickly. He paused at the edge of the bluff to observe the newcomers — he admitted to himself that they seemed to be men. Their great canoes had furled their wings, and it seemed to the cleric that perhaps a hundred of them had already gathered on the beach.
"Give me your knife," Mixtal demanded, claiming the obsidian blade of a younger apprentice. He tried to ignore the shame of his own blade's loss but felt a flush creeping over his features. "Into the forest! Follow me!"
For many hours of a day that grew hotter with each passing minute, the score of priests combed the jungle along the coast. They pressed eastward for a time, crossing Erix's trail at numerous points, but none of the clerics had the woodcraft to recognize it as such. Then they reversed course, moving back through the beaten zone, as the humid air settled heavily around them and morning became afternoon.
"Let's rest a moment," gasped Mixtal, collapsing against a tree. He noticed with annoyance that none of the apprentices seemed as exhausted as he was. All of their prickly hair spikes had collapsed into tangled mats, however.
"Most Holy One, perhaps we should seek help," suggested Atax tentatively.
"No!" Mixtal stood straight, vigorous once again with the alertness of cold panic. "We must find her! This is our task!"
Atax recoiled from the outburst, and Mixtal took mild satisfaction in that fact. At least there were some who would treat him with respect! Then Mixtal blinked, disbelieving, and watched Atax slide to the ground before him. The man was sleeping!
Raging, Mixtal spun to face his other apprentices. His rage quickly cooled into something approaching fear when he saw that they all slept!
"What's happening here?" he demanded plaintively. "Wake up!"
"Softly, O Holy One," soothed a voice.
"Who's that? Where are you?"
"I will speak and you will listen." The voice coaxed him gently, and Mixtal felt himself slumping to a seat on the ground. He listened.
"Searching for the girl in this fashion is foolish. Instead, you must gather warriors." Mixtal halfheartedly looked for the source of the voice, but he saw only flowers and birds, whirling colors gathering around him. He did not remember the jungle as such a colorful place, but it was really quite beautiful.
"Warriors?" he answered, from a great distance. "How?" Now the priest felt as though his eyes had been covered with a soft glaze, not painful, like looking through colorful smoke when the smoke was inside his eyes.
"Wait here." The voice soothed him further with its reassuring advice. Mixtal could not question the words. "The warriors will come to you. And then, if you look but a short distance, you will find her whom you seek."
And then Mixtal, too, slept, lapsing into a dream filled with singing flowers, talking snakes, and chattering, brilliant-plumed birds. He did not awaken for some time, and then only when he heard a man's
guttural question.
"Priest, why do you sleep here?"
"Wha — ?" Mixtal's eyes popped open and he sat up. He saw three Jaguar Knights, including the one who had just spoken, and beyond them a column of spearmen stretching to the limit of the cleric's vision in the undergrowth. Each spearman wore the breechclout typical of the Payit and carried three obsidian-tipped javelins, a caster, and a round shield of jaguar skin mounted over wood. Each had a bone or wooden ornament stuck crosswise through his nose and wore a high headdress of orange feathers.
"Warriors!" Now the priest sprang to his feet animatedly. "Wake up, you louts!" He gave Atax and another apprentice swift kicks. "The warriors are here!"
"You were expecting us?" demanded the knight as the apprentices roused their comrades.
"Do not question the will of Zaltec!" snapped Mixtal. "I have heard directly from the Ancient Ones!" At least, he thought he had. Things were happening so fast that the priest couldn't quite keep up. But he enjoyed the fear that passed across the Jaguar Knight's face at Mixtal's words.
"We have an important task to perform! A sacrifice demanded by Zaltec has escaped and is even now arousing the anger of the god. We must find her!"
"What tale is this?" asked the knight. "We have been sent here, this hundredmen, to keep watch over the invaders. A hundred hundred even now gather to the shore. I know nothing about a sacri — "
"The invaders!" Mixtal's mind seized upon an idea. His eyes still seemed to stare through a shifting haze of smoke, but now his brain whirled with ideas, with command. "Yes, they are the ones. They have taken her from the altar of Zaltec! Don't you understand? They are an affront to our gods! We must reclaim that which is rightfully Zaltec's!"
"I have my orders, from Gultec himself," grunted the knight, nervously.
"Would Gultec want you to stand by idly while our gods are defiled because of a woman taken from us?" Mixtal felt tall, as if the warriors were child-sized people gathered around him.
The knight turned and conferred quietly with the two other Jaguars of his company. Mixtal looked down and saw them gesturing and whispering.
"We must go! I will lead you to the invaders, and you will help me reclaim our property!"
Mixtal started into the jungle, followed by the apprentices. Slowly the column of warriors fell into file behind them.
"There! Let's go with them," urged Martine. Halloran looked resignedly at the four swordsmen who were hacking their way up the bluff. All around them, other small groups of scouts worked their way down the beach or pioneered other paths toward the high ground beyond the shore.
"No!" Hal turned to her in exasperation. "You shouldn't even be on the beach now!" He desperately wanted to lead one of the teams, but he knew that Martine would only accompany him. He looked at Cordell, together with the Bishou and Darien, several hundred yards up the beach. Halloran sensed the Bishou's eyes upon him every time he turned around. And Martine's bold gaze confronted him when he turned back.
"I am not a child, you know! I can take care of myself, and if you don't want to come along with me, you don't have to! I'm going to do a little exploring." She whirled away from him, and once again he stumbled after her.
He reached out to take her arm, but she fixed him with a glare of such intensity that his arms fell to his sides, as if paralyzed.
"What are you so worried about, anyway?" she teased.
"Another hakuna, perhaps. And what if the people aren't friendly everywhere we go?" Hal grew increasingly annoyed with her. He felt frustrated by the way she maneuvered him into acceptance of whatever she chose to do. But he could not show his anger. Some inner reserve kept his temper in check as she manipulated him, turning his frustration inward to seethe and simmer.
"But I have you to protect me, don't I?" She touched his arm and he started stammering. "Look at this — a stairway!" she exclaimed suddenly.
They reached the base of the bluff and saw the four swordsmen Martine had indicated earlier working their way upward through entangling vegetation. Now they could see that the path was in reality a series of broad, granite steps, climbing in steep switchbacks across the face of the bluff. Some distance to the right, the two huge faces looked out to sea.
Martine led Hal onto the granite steps, and they quickly joined the four men. Halloran wished he had brought Corporal ashore. The legion's war dogs were adept at spotting ambushes and other unpleasant surprises.
These steps, like the faces and the pyramid, evidenced a more organized and populous culture than the expedition had encountered on the islands. Even so, the level of jungle entanglement showed that they received very little use. Normally he would have enjoyed the exploration, with its splendid view of the lagoon, the strange sculpture, the steep ground. But instead, he found himself miserable, disgusted by his weakness in the face of Martine's manipulations.
It took some time to reach the top of the bluff, and Halloran watched the ships grow smaller below as they climbed. Most of the legion had debarked by now, but he felt quite isolated. He saw Daggrande lead perhaps a score of crossbowmen and swordsmen toward the stairway below and took some comfort from the sight.
"Captain?" One of the swordsmen stepped aside for Halloran as they reached the top of the stairway — Hal saw that they had reached a brushy strip of land atop the bluff, running parallel to the coast to the north and south at the lip of the sleep slope. Several hundred feet back from the edge rose the verdant wall of a tropical rain forest.
"There's the pyramid!" Martine cried, pointing, and Hal saw the squat structure rising from the brush perhaps a mile to the north along the coast.
"Let's head that way," suggested Halloran, knowing they would find other members of the expedition there.
He was mildly surprised when Martine agreed.
FIRST BLOOD
Erix awoke suddenly. She sat up, her mind unusually clear, with none of the dullness that usually accompanied emergence from sleep. Her first thought was of Chitikas, and she saw that the serpent was gone.
It was still daylight, and very hot. Her position on the bluff offered some concealment, but she knew that the strangers would be exploring the area. Her clump of brush would not hide her from nearby eyes.
Seeking more secure shelter, she crawled through the strip of brush toward the concealment of the jungle. Quickly finding the trail she had followed earlier, she moved into the forest, glancing around frequently, alert for any sounds from behind her.
She came around a bend in the trail, and suddenly, with dismay, she knew that her attention should have been directed on the trail ahead of her. The high priest Mixtal appeared around another bend, marching toward her, his face twisted into a mask of religious fervor. He stared directly into her eyes as she lunged from the trail, tripping and falling among a tangle of branches.
Twisting behind the bole of a large tree, she listened for his cry of alarm. He could not have failed to see her, and yet now he marched right past her hiding place, his eyes still fixed in that fanatical forward glare!
Erix tried to still the pounding of her heart as she lay beneath a canopy of wet leaves. She saw the feet of Mixtal's apprentices, then the sandaled feet of a long column of warriors, march past. Slowly she realized that, somehow, she had escaped him. Mixtal had seen her and ignored her, and the others in the column, struggling to keep up with the patriarch, had not gotten a glimpse of her before she hid.
Still, the young woman remained under cover for several minutes after the column had passed. Slowly her heartbeat returned to normal, and she emerged from the foliage onto the narrow trail.
The priests and warriors were out of sight. She knew that the sensible thing would be to turn inland, opposite Mixtal's path, and strike out for freedom. The bizarre expression on the man's face remained vivid in her mind. Still, something about him had seemed so unnatural, so strange, that her curiosity was aroused.
Cursing herself for a fool, Erix silently took up the trail behind Mixtal and his column of spearmen.
Mixtal marched along doggedly, driven by a consuming sense of purpose. Everything had become very clear. The words whispered in his ear must have come from the Ancient Ones! Had not the warriors arrived just as he had been told? Now his vision, still somehow hazy and indistinct, remained fixed upon the edge of the forest before him. He stepped from the concealing cloak of the woods and stopped in astonishment.
Mixtal rubbed his still smoke-fogged eyes in disbelief, but there could be no mistaking the sight before him. There she was, the girl who had escaped his altar at the start of this day! She was walking through the brushy clearing at the edge of the bluff, accompanied by five of the strange warriors.
"That's her!" he hissed, backing into concealment as the knights and spearmen gathered around him.
The clerics and warriors remained in the jungle, peering from the thick growth at the strangers. The five men, one of whom was wrapped in silver, walked in a small protective circle around the woman. The party move slowly along the crest of the bluff, less than a javelin's toss away.
Atax, the apprentice, looked at Mixtal in surprise, then looked at the red-haired woman before them. To him, she bore no resemblance to the girl Erix.
"Most Holy Patriarch — " he began, but Mixtal wasn't listening. Instead, the high priest squinted at the girl again, nodding eagerly. Atax still saw the flaming-haired stranger, but obviously Mixtal saw someone else. The apprentice wondered if he himself was going mad, but he suspected the madness lay across the vision of his master.
"You see?" Mixtal earnestly explained to the Jaguar Knights. "These villains seized her from our altar!"
The cleric again studied the girl. The haze over his eyes maddened him, but it seemed like the one place he saw clearly through the mist was toward this young woman, Erixitl. She was not obscured in the slightest. He saw her black hair, her rich coppery skin, even the tattered rag of her captive's gown in crystalline detail.
Ironhelm mt-1 Page 12
