Viperhand - Douglas Niles [42]
"Why did you take your cloak off?"
The immediate pain in Poshtli's face shocked Hal, all the more so since it was the first such emotion he had ever seen the stoic warrior express. He regretted the question as soon as he uttered it.
Poshtli took a deep breath. He knelt, wiping the blood from his weapon on the spotted cloak of one of the slain men. When he rose and looked at Hal again, his face was lined with strain. "I cannot tell you. But I have no regrets, and I am no longer an Eagle Knight."
The inference was not difficult: By aiding Hal, the knight had violated some trust of his order. He had shed his cloak and helmet before the fight deliberately. And yet it was a decision he had made resolutely.
"Thank you," said Hal, suddenly finding it difficult to speak.
Poshtli nodded, a half-smile on his face. He held up his weapon, and Halloran saw that several of the obsidian teeth were chipped. "Hard skin," the Maztican grunted, indicating the corpse at his feet.
"Just a minute." Turning to his saddlebag, neatly stowed in a corner, Hal withdrew a weapon from within a rolled-up blanket. It was a straight, slender longsword, with a double edge of razor-sharp steel. Halloran had kept it even after he had regained his lost Helmstooth, knowing that the weapon was priceless in the True World.
"Will you take this?" he asked, extending the hilt to the former Eagle Knight. "Now that you don't have your order behind you, perhaps you'll need a good weapon in front of you."
Poshtli took the weapon and hefted it, surprised by its tightness. He knew, having seen Hal use his blade in combat, that it could cut through any weapon wielded by his countrymen and render their cotton armor useless.
"Thank you," said the Maztican sincerely. "It may not replace my feathers, but it gives me an effective claw."
"Perhaps we'll need it. I've left my legion, and now you have departed your order. It looks like it's you and me against Maztica, friend."
Hal fell his comradeship with this brave man deepen. He regretted his earlier jealousy, though the memory of Erixitl in Poshtti's arms still gave him a sharp jab of pain. Still, the terrible sense of loneliness he had felt at her departure be- gan to lessen. Was there any real purpose in his being here? Could he in fact make some kind of difference? Halloran resolved to find out.
Poshtli laughed, but there was a serious edge to the sound. "We're both lone wolves, Halloran of the Sword Coast. But perhaps not so alone as we might think."
"What do you mean?"
"At first light, I suggest we seek an audience with my uncle. We'll see what the great Naltecona has to say about an attack under his own roof."
Her first night out of Nexal, Erix had barely enough time to cross the causeway to the mainland before sunset brought a temporary end to her journey. She sought shelter for the night in one of the travelers' inns that commonly dotted the landscape near Nexal.
These simple hostels offered a straw mat for sleeping and a bowl of beans or mayz, for a few cocoa beans or other barter goods. Fortunately, she had brought a small pouch of beans with her when she left the palace. The beans, her new feathered cloak, the pluma token from her father, and her dress were the only things she had taken with her.
She paused outside the inn and looked back at the valley, sharply etched as it was in the slanting rays of sunset. Shadows wisped (ike black smoke through the streets and across the lake, and she could no longer tell if they were the products of her disturbing premonitions or the actual descent of evening.
Beyond the city, she saw Mount Zatal clearly outlined against the sky. The mountain seemed ready to burst, swollen as it was from the volcanic pressure within. She imagined the folk of Nexal, busily going about their evening tasks. Cant they see it? Don't they understand the danger? With a deep sigh, she tried to accept the fact that they could not.
One person down in that city she