Viperhand - Douglas Niles [33]
"A great chief," mused the wizard. "That was a clever trap, and it was his pole that signaled the attack."
Cordell looked skyward again, his black eyes flashing. "I see what you mean," he breathed softly.
"Of course!" lakamal, carefully watching the battle, saw the horseman fall and instantly understood the monsters. "They are only beasts that carry men into battle!"
His heart surged, full of pride at the noble attack of his Jaguar Knights. Dozens had been slain beneath the feet of the lumbering beasts, but still they pressed their attack. And now the riders had been pushed back!
"Magnificent!" whispered Naloc. "Zaltec has smiled upon us this day."
"Perhaps he will smile upon us," cautioned the chief. "But the attack isn't broken yet. Witness how the silver soldiers resist, even when surrounded." He gestured toward the field below, where the circle of swordsmen still stood amid the howling mass of Kultakan warriors. For many minutes, they had been cut off from the rest of the legion, yet no more than a dozen had fallen-and at the cost of many hundreds of Kultakan dead.
"Now! Signal the advance!" barked lakamal.
Two of his signalmen raised banners, each of which glowed bright crimson under the heavy gray sky. The pennants streamed in the slight wind, stretching weightlessly into the air. For a moment, the battle paused as the Mazti-cans took note of the command fluttering from the knoll atop the ridge.
But then they saw something else up there. Naloc, and la-kamal himself, whirled in astonishment as a figure suddenly appeared on the ridgetop, barely thirty feet away.
The newcomer was a woman, lakamal saw-a woman with shockingly pale skin, and hair the color of snow. She wore a dark robe, but now the wind whipped that robe away from her body and he saw the bleached skin on her arms, her legs, her torso.
He saw, too, that she was very beautiful, in an icy sort of way. A golden circlet surrounded her brow, and her high cheekbones suggested nobility. Her eyes were wide, pale… and empty.
"By Zaltec!" gasped Naloc. The cleric seized his sacrificial dagger and held the stone blade over his head, lunging toward the woman. She seemed to be unarmed, though Taka-mal noticed a slender stick thrust through her belt.
She raised a hand and spat a word at Naloc-and the cleric grasped his chest with a dull moan and collapsed to the ground. He kicked his feet reflexively, as does a sacrifice sometimes even when his heart has been torn away. la-kamal knew that Naloc was dead.
The war chief of Kultaka stood tall, unbent even after his seventy years. He looked up at this slender female, who now turned those icy eyes on him. lakamal stood and watched. So, too, did the warriors of Kultaka, gathered on the field below.
A bolt of yellow energy, like a shot of lightning from the clouds, exploded from the woman's hand. She pointed her finger, and the power surged forth with a hiss and a crackle, faster than the eye could follow.
The magic drove into lakamal, for a moment outlining his body in sizzling blue flame. The smell of burned flesh wafted through the air. Still the great chief of the Kultakans made no sound, no movement. The energy of the lightning bolt exploded past, striking two of his flag-bearers dead behind him.
Then lakamal toppled, his life burned away by sorcery. Rigid and scarred in death, the war chiefs body fell forward, tumbling from the ridge to spill down the long slope, finally crashing to a halt among the still, stunned members of his army.
A few feathers from his singed headdress floated through the air, coming to rest on the ground atop the ridge, far above the Revered Counselor's shattered corpse. Those feathers, and two footprints outlined in black soot, were all that remained to show where lakamal had been.
From the chronicles of Colon:
The legend of the Plumed One's departure includes the promise of his return.
Qotal journeyed to Payit and climbed aboard a great feathered canoe, to