Viperhand - Douglas Niles [47]
Erix told her father of her life since, ten years ago, the Kultakan Jaguar Knight had snatched her from the ridge above this very house, of her slavery in Kultaka, and then her sale to the Payit priest of Qotal, who had taken her to his distant jungle land. And how she had met the stranger, Hal-loran, and been visited by the feathered serpent, the couatl.
Her father listened silently, only remarking about the couatl. "Nobody has seen one for many centuries," he had announced, impressed.
"What of Shatil?" Erix asked hesitantly after concluding her tale. "Is my brother well?"
Lotil sighed. "As a priest, he does very well. He is already the first assistant to the high priest here in Palul."
Erix understood her father's mixed feelings. While she and her brother had been raised, as all Maztican children, to understand the necessity of the blood rituals demanded by Zaltec and many of the other gods, she knew that her father had never approved of those rites. Although he had never told her bluntly, she had always suspected that he despised the bloodthirsty practices of the priests.
Yet now, as first assistant, her own brother was a main practitioner of those rites. Palul, a much smaller community than Nexal, offered but an occasional sacrifice at dawn or at sunset. Shatil undoubtedly performed a significant number of those rituals himself.
"He is an important man in the town," continued her father, "but he listens only to those who say what he wants to hear, who echo the chants of Zaltec and his ilk. He has even told me he intends to journey to Nexal to take the vow of the Viperhand."
Erix took her father's shoulders in her own hands, surprised at his frailty. The thought of the Viperhand emblazoned on Shatil's chest caused her sharp panic. She.knew little about the cult, except that its members espoused hatred and warfare against the approaching strangers from the Realms.
"Father, who is this?" The voice from the door spun them both around.
"Shatil?" asked Erix hesitantly.
"Erixitl? Can it be you?" Her brother stepped into the house, then swept her in his arms. "Zaltec has been kind to bring you home!"
She clung to him, for a second remembering the youth she had admired so much in her childhood. Then they separated, and when Erix looked at her brother, her memories vanished. Shatil's head bristled with the customary spikes of hair worn by the priests of Zaltec. Scars covered his arms and his ears and cheeks, where he had marked himself in ritual penance.
"You have become a woman," Shatil said approvingly.
"And you are… a priest," she replied.
She looked from the young man to the old, wondering if the sun had suddenly set. Then, with a shudder, she knew that she saw that darkening premonition again, settling across the men and the room.
All through the house, everything was shadows.
"Captain Daggrande." Cordell looked up from the table, which was covered with maps and rosters on parchment sheets.
"General?" The dwarf stood before his commander, carrying a padded cotton tunic such as the Maztican warriors wore as armor.
"Have you tested the stuff?" The captain-general indicated the armor.
"Yessir. It seems to stop the arrows and darts pretty well. It also takes the sting from a chop with one of those swords-macas, they call 'em. With a buckler, a fellow could protect himself pretty well."
"And comfort? Encumbrance?"
"Sir, in this heat, these cotton things put a steel breastplate to shame. The men who wore 'em moved faster and farther than those who wore steel." The dwarf reported on a series of tests he had conducted outside Kultaka while the legion refitted for its next great march.
"Excellent!" Cordell stood up and came around the table to clap Daggrande on the back. "Have the men outfitted in them. Those that want can keep their steel, but tell them the pace of our marching will pick up."
"Very well, sir!" Daggrande turned to go as another man entered Cordell's headquarters, which was located in laka-mal's palace in