Viperhand - Douglas Niles [137]
"Run, man! Run for your Me!" Cordell gasped at Dag-grande. The two legionnaires staggered like drunks along the nightmarishly contorted causeway. Finally they reached the city, even as waves crashed over the narrow roadway and carried it into the black depths of the steaming lake.
"Where?" groaned the dwarf, pausing to fill his straining lungs with air. The ground heaved and buckled underfoot, and they both sprawled to the stones of the street.
"The lakeshore-it's our only chance! We can steal some canoes and get out of here!"
Once again they lumbered forward. A huge beast reared out of the darkness before them, chomping its fang-filled maw. It reached out a wickedly clawed hand, striking for Cordell's face.
"Look, by Helm!" cried the captain-general, stumbling backward in horror.
On the breast of the beast, like a blood-red scar, Cordell saw the diamond-shaped brand of the Viperhand.
Daggrande chopped at the troll with his axe, driving the monster backward and pushing it out of the stream of escaping refugees. Then the men swept past, losing sight of the beast in the swirling advance of the mob.
The fleeing Mazticans, like the few legionnaires among them, hurried toward the lake, trying to escape the crumbling city. Buildings fell, toppling across roadways and crushing hundreds of people at a time. GreaTcracks opened in the ground, and these swiftly filled with water, forming deep and treacherous moats where moments earlier had stood a pastoral garden or graceful two-story manor.
More and more of the soldiers joined with them as they passed. Cordell saw the weeping form of Kardann huddled beside the road. He roughly pulled the assessor to his feet and dragged him along in their flight.
"Monsters-ores, ogres! They're everywhere!" wailed the assessor. "I saw them attacking the people, the women, even the little children. They-they simply tore them to pieces!"
"Stop it, man!" Cordell barked. "Just worry about getting away, getting to somewhere safe!"
But this testimony to the savagery of the monsters of the Viperhand made him wonder if there could be anyplace safe left to them. As if to emphasize his fear, bands of ores, ogres, and trolls snapped at the fringes of the crowd.
Then they reached the shore of the lake. Cordell vaguely recognized the dark, brackish water called Lake Qotal. But now its surface tossed chaotically, too turbulent by far to bear the passage of any canoe.
Hoxitl tossed back his huge, maned head and howled his rage at the skies, his widespread maw revealing long, wickedly curving fangs. He stomped a massive foot, sending cracks shooting outward through the ground. Around him stretched the wreckage of the pyramid.
"You have betrayed me!" he cried, though the words made sense to him alone. All others heard the yapping and snarling of a savage beast. He shrieked his fury at his god, sensing Zaltec's weakness even as he saddled him with blame.
"Ifou, Zaltec! 1 curse you and your name!" Hoxitl knew dimly that the curse that had wracked him and the members of his league was more than the work of one god, even a god of Zaltec's might. The influence of Helm, the strangers' god, could not be denied. Nor the presence of the dark punisher of the Ancient Ones, the one who had corrupted her followers even as Zaltec had twisted and deformed his own.
With a snarl of animal rage, Hoxitl tore himself from the rubble of the collapsed pyramid, rising to his full height of nearly twenty feet in the courtyard beyond. Around him, snorting and groveling, cavorted the bestial masses of his league, slaying those human warriors who still lived and had not yet fled.
The beast howled again, a shrieking, devastating sound that blasted through the ruins, causing all who heard it to stop and tremble in abject terror. Lurching forward with a rolling, lumbering gait, like an ape's, Hoxitl led his creatures through the ruins.
His eyes saw much, through the smoke and haze of destruction. And on the shore, pinned against Lake Qotal, he saw his victims. Directly, with his monstrous army following at his heels,