Viperhand - Douglas Niles [130]
"Below-look out!" Grimes cried, stabbing downward with his blood-and rain-slicked lance.
A warrior fell back into his canoe, toppling the craft. At the same time, Cordell felt strong fingers grab his feet, and he sliced viciously downward with his sword. He was rewarded by the sharp chop of the blade through flesh and bone, though to his horror, the severed hands continued to clutch his ankles until he kicked them free.
The darkness seemed to move, so thick was the press of Nexalan attackers. Cordell stabbed and hacked, unseeing and uncaring of his victims, knowing that everyone in the canoes below them was an enemy.
More of his legionnaires pushed their way to the gaping end of the causeway, hurling themselves into the water in a desperate attempt to swim to safety. Many of these-those who had loaded themselves down with gold-sank beneath the water and disappeared. Others were hauled, screaming and struggling, into canoes, bound, and spirited back to the city, destined for the fate that had become far move fearsome to the legionnaires than death on the battlefield.
Overturned canoes and other craft wrecked during the combat clogged the water before them. Rain alternately pounded them or misted lightly. Many bodies bobbed in the lake now as both Nexalan and legionnaire fighters fell into the water, drowning in the press of chaos.
"MfeVe got to do something!" cried Grimes as more and more of their men jumped or were dragged into the lake. Indeed, before them, the water had virtually disappeared among the mass of wreckage.
"Any ideas?" grunted the captain-general. He heard a cry of pain and a splash behind him, turning to see one of his men struggling with six Mazticans in canoes. The swordsman struggled in the water, slipping on the bodies below him, howling with terror as the natives pulled him into the canoe. With swift strokes of their paddles, three of them steered their craft away while the others turned to the causeway, after more victims.
Cordell heard more screams and the triumphant whistles of the Mazticans, and he knew that, somewhere, still another legionnaire had been dragged to a short, grim captivity.
"Murdering savages!" Bishou Domincus's bellow carried above the din, and Cordell saw the cleric struggling along the edge of the causeway, laying about with a heavy staff.
"Almighty Helm!" cried the Bishou. "Strike the heathens with your vengeance! Deliver your faithful from the jaws of death!"
But the heavens only delivered more rain, in the dull, pounding cadence that had marked the brutal tempo of the night and now, as gray dawn filtered into the valley of Nexat, counted time for the steadily growing illumination.
"Bishou!" The cleric looked up and saw Cordell standing at the lip of the causeway. With a sinking heart, he saw the dark water blocking their path.
"Helm has forsaken us!" groaned Domincus, reaching the commander. "I fear we have angered him, and he turns away from us in our hour of need!"
"Never mind!" snapped the black-bearded commander. "Do you have any magic, anything at all that can help us across this?" Cordell gestured to the strip of water, bristling with enemy canoes. Even the continuation of the causeway across the thirty-foot gap was packed with Maztican warriors who fired arrows or slung stones at the embattled legionnaires.
"No," the cleric said. "My power is exhausted now. It will take many hours of quiet meditation to restore my spells."
Cordell turned away in disgust. He didn't see a hook dart forward from one of the canoes, suddenly sweeping the Bishou from the causeway. Domincus cried out, plunging into the water, and Cordell whirled back to see many natives eagerly pulling the cleric into a canoe.
"No! Leave him, you devils!" cried Cordell, lashing toward them with his sword. The canoes paddled back, out of range, but the captain-general